Crimson Bound

"Do you think that doing the right thing will always be pretty?"

Title: Crimson Bound

Author: Rosamund Hodge 

Published On: May 5th 2015 

Published By: Balzer + Bray 

Genre: YA, Fantasy, Romance, Retelling

Pages: 448 

Rating: 2.5

• Buy on Amazon
• Goodreads

"When Rachelle was fifteen she was good—apprenticed to her aunt and in training to protect her village from dark magic. But she was also reckless— straying from the forest path in search of a way to free her world from the threat of eternal darkness. After an illicit meeting goes dreadfully wrong, Rachelle is forced to make a terrible choice that binds her to the very evil she had hoped to defeat.

Three years later, Rachelle has given her life to serving the realm, fighting deadly creatures in an effort to atone. When the king orders her to guard his son Armand—the man she hates most—Rachelle forces Armand to help her find the legendary sword that might save their world. As the two become unexpected allies, they uncover far-reaching conspiracies, hidden magic, and a love that may be their undoing. In a palace built on unbelievable wealth and dangerous secrets, can Rachelle discover the truth and stop the fall of endless night?

Inspired by the classic fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood, Crimson Bound is an exhilarating tale of darkness, love, and redemption."

So really, this one's around a 2.5. One of the reviewers I follow could not say enough good things about this book, along with the author's first, Cruel Beauty. So, I decided to give them both a chance. I ended up loving Cruel Beauty because the main character was just so - yup, you guessed it - cruel. In the best possible way. She was twisted and flawed but it was those twists and flaws that made her hundred percent likable to me. She was complex and she was real - and it was nice to see that in a genre so often filled with cut-and-paste heroines.

In Crimson Bound , we are presented with a similarly intricate main character; Rachelle is a murderer and she knows that she can't be redeemed for that. She never tries to justify her actions, even when someone else in her shoes might. She is a person who has done horrible things, made terrible mistakes, and made the wrong choices, all of which she is not proud of.

And yet.

And yet, she still wants to do good; she strives to protect those she loves and vanquish the evil that crawls about in the dark. She is so much more complex than your average YA heroine, and I definitely liked that about this book. I'v got to give it to Hodge  - she really knows how to write good, three dimensional characters. She plays on the reader's expectations and on stereotypes; just when you think you have a character all figured out, you find out that you were completely wrong. So, you have been warned. No one in this book is as they seem. Every character is multifaceted, deeply flawed, and crafted into something deliciously elaborate. Even the villain. Especially the villain. He is not who you think, and unlike many Marvel movies I've seen recently, his role in the story extends beyond the evil-for-evil's sake antagonist.

Another thing I liked was the setting - a country named Gévaudan that is based on Seventeen Century France. Drawing clear inspiration from the famous Sun King and the Palace of Versailles, this was an interesting backdrop for a Little Red Riding Hood reimagining. I say reimagining and not retelling because although Hodge keeps some of the key elements of the fairy tale - a red hood, a wolf, a forest - there is so much more going on here that was not included in the original.

That being said, I had the most difficult time falling into the rhythm of this book's world. The mythology and the worldbuilding were so confusing to me. There were a bunch of terms - forestborn, bloodbound, woodspawn - that took me a while to grasp. And if I'm honest, I'm still unsure if I truly understand it all, especially the woodspawn. This could just be a failing of intelligence on my part, but it definitely made the story harder to get into.

I found the middle to drag a bit, and really had to push myself in order to keep going. Like I said earlier, Rachelle is a complex character, and because of this I struggled to understand the way she thought and how she reacted to the moral dilemmas she faced. It wasn't until the end of the book that I truly started to catch the vision of what Hodge wanted the readers to feel and think about her.

I also felt like some of the more important character-building scenes slid right off of me, and I had to go back and reread them a few times in order to fully realize what was happening. Just when I thought I wouldn't be able to make it, the action started to pick up and I blew through the last fifty or so pages. In the end, this story makes the reader consider a lot of interesting questions about salvation, forgiveness, and love. It just didn't work as well for me as Cruel Beauty did.