Carnival of Souls

Today’s post is on “Carnival of Souls” by Melissa Marr. It is 306 pages long and is published by HarperCollins. It is the first book in a unnamed series. The cover is a beautiful white and silver carnival mask with flames behind it. The intended reader is older young adult and adults because of the sexuality, violence, and language. There is plenty of sex and violence just to warn the reader. There Be Spoilers Ahead.

From the dust jacket- In a city of daimons, rigid class lines separate the powerful from the power-hungry. And at the heart of The City is the Carnival of Souls, where both murder and pleasure are offered up for sale. Once in a generation, the carnival hosts a deadly competition that allows every daimon a chance to join the ruling elite. Without the competition, Aya and Kaleb would both face bleak futures--if for different reasons. For each of them, fighting to the death is the only way to try to live.

All Mallory knows of The City is that her father--and every other witch there--fled it for a life in exile in the human world. Instead of a typical teenage life full of friends and maybe even a little romance, Mallory scans quiet streets for threats, hides herself away, and trains to be lethal. She knows it's only a matter of time until a daimon finds her and her father, so she readies herself for the inevitable.While Mallory possesses little knowledge of The City, every inhabitant of The City knows of her. There are plans for Mallory, and soon she, too, will be drawn into the decadence and danger that is the Carnival of Souls.

From Melissa Marr, bestselling author of the Wicked Lovely series and Graveminder, comes a brand-new tale of lush secrets, dark love, and the struggle to forge one's own destiny.

Review- This book is very well written but there is really one thing that bothers me about it and I think that the reader is supposed to be bothered and that is all females in this world are seen as property of the males in their lives. All the males, both daimon and witch, think and act like all females are the rightful property of some male or another. I am hoping that Marr is making this a point so that Mallory will change it as the story goes on. Other than that I really enjoyed the book. The characters and the world itself are interesting. I have cautious interest of the next book just to see where Marr is going with it. None of the characters really change over the course of the book but it happens over just a few days so there is just not time for them to change; in spite of that this is not plot driven. The plot is there but I am unsure where Marr is going with it. I have an idea and that is that Mallory is going to change the world she is from but I have no idea about how she is going to do this. I am willing to trust Marr and see where she wants to go with this story.

I give this one Four out of Five Stars. I get nothing for my review and I borrowed this book from my local library.