White Stag by Kara Barbieri
Permafrost #1
Publisher: Wednesday Books
Publication Date: January 8th, 2019
Rating: 2 Stars
Source: Netgalley
Format: eARC
Pages: 368
Summary (from Goodreads):
The first book in a brutally stunning series where a young girl finds herself becoming more monster than human and must uncover dangerous truths about who she is and the place that has become her home.
As the last child in a family of daughters, seventeen-year-old Janneke was raised to be the male heir. While her sisters were becoming wives and mothers, she was taught to hunt, track, and fight. On the day her village was burned to the ground, Janneke—as the only survivor—was taken captive by the malicious Lydian and eventually sent to work for his nephew Soren.
Janneke’s survival in the court of merciless monsters has come at the cost of her connection to the human world. And when the Goblin King’s death ignites an ancient hunt for the next king, Soren senses an opportunity for her to finally fully accept the ways of the brutal Permafrost. But every action he takes to bring her deeper into his world only shows him that a little humanity isn’t bad—especially when it comes to those you care about.
Through every battle they survive, Janneke’s loyalty to Soren deepens. After dangerous truths are revealed, Janneke must choose between holding on or letting go of her last connections to a world she no longer belongs to. She must make the right choice to save the only thing keeping both worlds from crumbling.
**I received an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review**
Trigger warning for mentions of rape.
White Stag is basically a story that follows Janneke, a human thrall to a Goblin master, as he goes on the Hunt, trying to become the next Erlking.
Janneke has lived in the Permafrost, or the chilly world of the goblins, for about 100 years. The synopsis of this book is a bit misleading, I think, because it made me think that it would moreso follow Janneke as she is taken from the human world into the Permafrost, but actually she has been a thrall in the Permafrost for almost 100 years now. This book picks up as Janneke is accompanying Soren to wait for the Erlking to die and the White Stag to run off so the goblins can chase it and find out who the next Erlking will be. It also turns out that she is adapting so well to living in the Permafrost that she is losing her humanity and becoming a Goblin herself.
I liked Janneke well enough. She has really found herself in a conundrum. She finds herself becoming a monster, but some events in this book have her questioning what her definition of a monster is and whether it is actually strictly goblin or if there's more to it than that. She is also struggling with what happened to her as she was taken from the human world. The goblin that took her in brutally raped her and mutilated one of her breasts while he was at it.
These two facts were brought up over and over and over again. And while I definitely sympathize with Janneke and understand why she hates Lydian so much and wants to Soren to be Erlking over him, I don't think these facts needed to be thrust in our faces so often. What happened to her was horrible and Lydian is definitely a bastard, and perhaps having to be around him so much with the Hunt going on is bringing back traumatic memories for her, but it was still brought up way more than was truly necessary.
Janneke is definitely strong to be able to survive what she has and to live among the Goblins for so long without dying. She is also dealing with leftover feelings of guilt about surviving the attack on her village while her entire family and everyone else was slaughtered. She is wondering what her loved ones would think of her as she's becoming less human. She really needs to catch a break.
Soren is the love interest and Janneke's 'master'. But he doesn't really treat her so much like a thrall. It has been a week or so since I finished this book and I honestly don't remember that much about Soren. I did like him while I was reading the story and he wasn't totally awful and I liked him and Janneke together, but he was not a super interesting character. There was nothing to him, he definitely needed a lot of development.
The other important character is the villain, Lydian. He is the one who, I think, led the attack on Janneke's village and originally took her in as a thrall. He would frequently ask her things like, "What happens when the serpent stops eating it's tail?" And it's clearly something important to Lydian, he thinks it's something that could disrupt their world. It's not something that really gets any attention, but at the end of the book there is a vague mention of it. I'm still confused about this part of the book?
While I did like the romance in this book, it really wasn't exciting. It didn't feel like anything special, and it was kinda forgettable.
There is next to no world building in this book. I'm confused about most aspects of this world in general.
I'm confused about the thralls. Besides Janneke, I remember one other thrall being mentioned. Goblins seem to need human thralls to perform tasks for them that they can't do for themselves. I think it is a concept similar to in An Enchantment of Ravens where the fae can't do "Craft" so instead they pay humans to do these things for them. But in this book, goblins just kidnap humans to perform these tasks for them. But I don't recall there ever being any kind of explanation as to what kind of tasks goblins can't perform and why? I feel like that is important to the overall concept of thralls? It seems like, if there are tasks that they can't perform themselves, goblins would need thralls, and therefore there should be more mentions of them? Basically the task that Janneke performs for Soren is listening/spying. Probably not something that he physically cannot do himself.
So, the overall plot of the book is that they are on the Hunt to determine the new Erlking. But if I remember correctly, at the beginning, it kind of sounded like there would be so many groups on this Hunt, trying to kill the stag. And it kind of sounded like it could be dangerous? But besides the group that she is in, they meet one other group of goblins on their overall journey. That's not really what I was expecting, I guess. They find some trouble from some creatures that I think were supposed to be dragons, but I thought they were just giant worms like that one huge worm that causes trouble in some episode of Spongebob. That's what I was picturing. There were several other creatures that throw a wrench into their plans too, but I was thinking that other goblins would be more of a problem than they were.
Another thing, for a book that is supposed to overall kind of be a journey, there really aren't much for traveling scenes. There are a few, but for the most part it felt to me like they were in one place, then oh, they were in another, then all of a sudden they were in yet another.
Lastly, the goblins in this book were described as being beautiful and that just doesn't fit with everything I think I know about goblins. It sounds like it might be some kind of glamour, but still, that doesn't feel right.
Overall, I found this book fun to read at the moment. But after the fact, I am left with a lot of questions and not a lot of recollection of what actually happened in this book. The premise of the Hunt and finding the next Erlking is super interesting, but the characters are mostly boring and the world and journey are too.
I am kind of curious to see what happens in the future of this series, but probably not curious enough to pay money to find out. This is not a book that I would personally recommend to someone.
Have you read White Stag yet? What did you think of it?
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