Book Review: A Single Spark

Title: A Single Spark

Author: Tayvia Pierce

Date: 2019

Length: 467 pages

Quote: "My name is Carys...I am not a terrible person, despite what the history books will say."

In this book, which is a Volume 1, there's no reason for the history books to find Carys a terrible person. She's young, privileged, bland, but willing to work, learn, and fight. At the beginning of the story she's the middle of three children and the least spoiled-bratty, which is why her father names her his heir. Older brother Iolyn, 25 when the story begins, is a drinker and fairly useless. Younger sister Rhian, 15, is a bundle of hormones. Carys, 20, takes over the family budget. They all think their mother is dead, but midway through the story she comes back. Carys remains in charge of the budget. 

Because they're rich they're not supposed to go out without guards. Carys's father is old school enough to imagine that young women can be trained to feel snobbish enough to be trusted not to notice that the guards he's picked for them are young men. He is, of course, wrong. When it becomes obvious that the family's money isn't going to be restored, he betroths each daughter to one of the guards. That doesn't go well, either. Both sisters are more interested in a man they meet in a place where they're staying while their father tries to restore his fortune. He's called Ben; he appears to be about 25 and is willing to teach Carys basic self-defense so she can protect Rhian. He and Carys could easily "fall in love," but all is not what it seems in their fairytale kingdom. There's a race of Elves, in the grand Tolkien manner, and then there's a race of human-elf crossbreeds. Ben is one of them. He patronizes human brothels; he doesn't want to fall in love with a human whose life expectancy will be only about a tenth of his. 

But the family's story is not a simple romance written to show how, even when young people want to do the right thing, marry the people their parents choose, and let love follow if it will, Romantic Love tends to mess up that kind of tidy arrangement. Ben's past comes back; Rhian comes home to find him beaten and left for dead on the floor. The girls' mother has her own source of wealth, so the family can afford to continue living as "nobles," but is she trustworthy? Their sad, prematurely aged father...

A review couldn't spoil the ending if it tried. This book has no ending, in the literary sense. It ends on a cliff-hanger. It ends without giving any idea of why people would think Carys is a terrible person.

I received a review copy of this book, months ago. It's not that I didn't appreciate it. It's not that I didn't make several attempts to read it. It's that, for no obvious reason, I'd get somewhere between half and a third of the way through it and Chrome would crash and lose the tab. Well. I finally managed to hold the tab open long enough to read the book, so I'm pretty sure local weather plus Microsoft's idiotic efforts to sell more "updates" and "upgrades" and paid subscription services are to blame, not the e-book itself. I was not always sure about this, but now I am.