Because You Love to Hate Me(71)

MARIGOLD, AKA VICTORIAN ENGLAND’S MOST DESIRABLE BACHELORETTE:

Why, why did it have to be her? How had Marigold caught the eye of the Erl-queen? She was quiet as a doll, and delicate, too, more of a household spirit than a living girl.

Samantha turns this “maiden in a tower” trope on its head when it’s revealed that the saviors are, in fact, Marigold’s captors. Men, if they desired, had the power to not only control but also destroy every aspect of a woman’s life in Victorian society. This twist also showed how easily a woman’s desires are dismissed without a thought.

GEORGE BEING THE ABSOLUTE WORST PERSON ON THE PLANET:

“Riddles and blasphemy.” George gripped her arm. “Back to London we go, my dear. Isaac, with me.” His face was almost bloodless. “We must get Marigold away from here. She needs protection from a man, not this monster.”

Marigold did not want to be saved. The Erl-queen’s reign was not a prison but a sanctuary. For the first time in her existence, Marigold could make her own choices regarding her happiness, and she would do anything to not have to forfeit that to anyone.

MARIGOLD KILLIN’ IT BOTH LITERALLY AND METAPHORICALLY:

A whimper was the only sound that passed his lips. He could not move; he could not speak; he could not scream as the forest drank him into its embrace. Somewhere in the dancing shadows, Marigold was singing.

Marigold and the Erl-queen show women taking power back in their own hands and ultimately shattering the notion of female fragility and meekness with a hammer.

Oh man, was it an interesting contrast to place this powerful woman in nineteenth-century England! Did you know that Victorian England was one of the most visibly conservative times for women in Western history? Women were not only oppressed politically and socially, but in many ways physically as well. They were confined to their “separate sphere,” deemed only able to exist to rear children and to balance out the moral taint that their husbands produced in the outside world. They were the moral light to civilization, too weak for work and surely too weak for evil.

All this historical baggage came to a head wonderfully in Samantha’s story, which makes the reader confront the ambiguity of evil head-on. Two men set out, determined to save this “poor girl” from the grasp of the evil Erl-queen, only to have the tables turned on them—and the reader. Evil in many cases is a matter of perspective, and society tends to villainize things they don’t understand (such as female independence). Sometimes true evil isn’t understood until it’s too late, but sometimes, if we’re lucky, it is immortalized as a lesson for others.

Folklore is funny that way.





YOU, YOU, IT’S ALL ABOUT YOU





BY ADAM SILVERA



You’ve made a name for yourself. And no one remembers the old one.

You threw away your birth name because an eighteen-year-old building a reputation as a respectable crime lord was difficult enough without being held back by the name Amanda. For the past four months, you’ve gone by Slate, the dealer of the finest memory drugs. You’re worshipped for the way Daze can make the city forget. You’re celebrated for the way Token can revive memories as far back as childhood. You’re feared for the way Trance can implant false stories others forge. Your reputation is godly, but precautions such as your mask are still to be taken.

Hiding doesn’t bother you. If believers never see God’s face, why should they see yours?

These days, unfortunately, you’re a god who has to get her hands dirty. You shouldn’t be out here at the dock for this deal. Neither should Karl, who’s parked a couple of blocks north to take you home once this transaction is done. But your last assistant, some clown who was twice your age, thought it would be funny to sell your drugs at half price and skip town. He certainly wasn’t laughing when you tracked him down, brought him back, and force-fed him an entire bottle of Daze until he could only remember six select words. Now he spends his days and nights walking the streets and uttering your warning to anyone passing him: “Slate is not to be betrayed.”

You let him live, but you took his life.

Fair trade.

You walk to the edge of the dock, the stink of floating trash overpowering the rotted flesh that makes up your mask. You stare at the decapitated Statue of Liberty beneath the moon, finding it oddly beautiful. You expected destruction like this after little gangbangers working for Pierce started spiking people’s drinks with his new Brawn serum last month, but you didn’t think the steroids were so charged that it’d make the users psychotic enough to scale up the statue and pound away at its face with their fists until it crumbled onto the island. Thankfully, Lady Liberty got the last laugh when she took those bastards down with her, crushing them.

Footsteps cautiously approach you.

You know your client is on time without checking your watch. No one gets a second chance at an appointment with you, the most wanted girl in the city. The cops want you and the junkies want you. You’re more wanted than Pierce and his superstrength serum. You’re more wanted than Local and his tracking bugs, which are so reliable that even cops are illegally using them. But no one wanted you dead or locked up in prison more than Franklin Ladeaux, the young scientist undoing all your work with his Retrieve vaccine; you took care of that. Now you’re wanted most by Karl, thankfully. You need this one good connection in this life of masks that makes you want to be yourself.