FRAGILE ETERNITY

Three months after the events of Wicked Lovely (2007), Aislinn and her boyfriend, Seth, are still trying to figure out the complex world of Faerie. Though Aislinn, as the Summer Queen, has an antagonistic relationship with the Winter Queen, Donia, Donia’s frigidity is the least of Aislinn’s problems. Elsewhere in the city, two sisters representing Order and Chaos predict war for Faerie. The overwrought, repetitive writing (one character “quirks his brow” at no fewer than three points in the book) that is Marr’s trademark does not let up for a moment here. In spite of this, the plots of multiple love triangles and impending war manage to move much more smoothly from scene to scene than in Wicked Lovely or the companion Ink Exchange (2008). Romantics will be touched by Seth’s undying, if blind, devotion to the ever-more-untouchable Aislinn; he goes so far as to become a faery himself in order to be with her forever. Like its predecessors, this book is a few hundred pages of mediocrity underneath an exquisite cover, and it will fly off library and bookstore shelves. (Fantasy. YA)