carnival of souls

carnival of souls
melissa marr
ya/supernatural/romance
harper
published 2012

In a city of daimons, the Carnival of Souls hosts a deadly competition. Once in a generation, every citizen can fight 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.

In our own world, Mallory knows that her father—and every other witch—fled the daimons’ city long ago. She trains to be lethal because it’s only a matter of time until the daimons catch up with them.

While Mallory possesses little knowledge of The City, every inhabitant of The City knows of her. There are plans there for Mallory, and soon she, too, will be drawn into the decadence that is the Carnival of Souls.

Melissa Marr has crafted a fascinatingly intricate world in Carnival of Souls.  There is so much here!  Trying to keep track, at first, of everything is a bit overwhelming.  There's so many characters who all have a stake in the story and so many different events to keep track of.

Eventually, everything starts to come together so it's a bit easier to get a handle on until finally you feel like you can get into the meat of the story and then....it ends!

But fear not, Melissa Marr has indicated that although this was meant to be a stand alone novel, it outgrew the book so there will be at least one more installment to finish out the story.

Now, this is only the second book by Marr that I've read.  I read the first Wicked Lovely book (and loved it - still waiting on the next one from the library) and I've noticed that she keeps the focus on a group of characters instead of just two.  At first, I found this too be confusing and even diluting to the story, but now it's like getting bonuses in your book.  Aya and Belias, Zevi, Mallory and Kaleb are all well thought out and genuinely likeable characters.  Had the story been only about Mallory & Kaleb with the others merely as background people I would have been itching to get into more of Aya's story.

This might be one of those books I have to buy so that when the next one eventually comes out I'll be able to do a quick reread.  It's a quick read, but really chock full of story!