The Falconer by Elizabeth May
Release Date: UK September 26th, 2013
                          US  May 6th, 2014
Goodreads: The Falconer

Heiress. Debutant. Murderer. A new generation of heroines has arrived.

Edinburgh, Scotland, 1844

Lady Aileana Kameron, the only daughter of the Marquess of Douglas, was destined for a life carefully planned around Edinburgh’s social events – right up until a faery killed her mother.

Now it’s the 1844 winter season and Aileana slaughters faeries in secret, in between the endless round of parties, tea and balls. Armed with modified percussion pistols and explosives, she sheds her aristocratic facade every night to go hunting. She’s determined to track down the faery who murdered her mother, and to destroy any who prey on humans in the city’s many dark alleyways.

But the balance between high society and her private war is a delicate one, and as the fae infiltrate the ballroom and Aileana’s father returns home, she has decisions to make. How much is she willing to lose – and just how far will Aileana go for revenge?

If you've been around Goodreads for a while, you know there's been a lot of excitement about this book for quite a while now. And why not? The author sounds lovely, she left a pretty cool pre-review of the book full of funny gifs, and, oh yeah, this is a Victorian, steampunk Scotland in which murderous faeries roam and there's this one badass chick that hunts them. What is there to not be excited about? In the end, I can say in all honesty, as someone that has had a pretty bad relationship with books about faeries, that The Falconer is probably the best faerie title I've read to date.

The Falconer delivers in its promise of action, faerie murder and a journey of revenge. It was relentless in its delivery of action and fighting scenes and the theme of revenge is carried out nicely by this imperfect, conflicted girl that is unflinching in her rage and the descent that the pursuit of vengeance is taking her life on. Aileana was a pretty strong protagonist, far beyong just being kickass. She was capable in far more than fighting, with skills that include being actually intelligent and building amazing machines and weapons. I love stories that have girls being brilliant at building things, and there was plenty of that in this book, but there was something missing from there that would make it actually believable that this 18 year-old girl was engineering all by herself machines and weapons on technology that the rest of the country is limited in. Is not that it wasn't believable because of Aileana's disposition or because she somehow managed to find time to build cannons or locomotives in a few hours squeezed between social drama and fae killing, but there wasn't enough scientific and mechanical details for me to actually believe she was building all those things. Throughout many scenes there would be not a single sentence about building anything, and then a new chapter begins and Aileana is giving the final touches to this impressive contraption with very little detail about its design, construction or production. It didn't bothered me as much as that paragraph might imply because I was still really excited about Aileana's engineering, but there was something missing and that's something I couldn't quite shake up while I read.

Other than that Aileana was a competent lead and I did like the conflicting morality to her character. As a narrator, she had a tendency to tell rather than show, but her voice is pretty engaging all the way throughout the novel.

The rest of the characters weren't exactly fleshed-out, but they were charming. Derrick was the typical cute sidekick of comic relief, and it worked. Her friend, whose name I've already forgotten, didn't make much of an appearance other than when it was necessary. but I did appreciate the lack of girl-on-girl hating that predominates in this type of books. There is a rather strange love-triangle here, but one that, surprisingly, I found myself interested in. This is not a romance-heavy novel. There is an attraction going on here that is obvious all along, but that doesn't get acted on until the very end. Still, both lower parts of the triangle perfectly exemplified Aileana's dual nature, the different sides of herself. I liked that it wasn't a love triangle in the strictest sense, with passion and love for equal parts, but rather one of the responsibility to yourself and to society. As far as Kiaran goes, our sexy, mysterious fae-killer trainer, he's the pretty standard stoic, seemingly emotionless guy with a tragic past and a vendetta, but I can't say that he bothered me in the slightest and I think his flashes of humanity were written pretty nicely, even if sometimes he was a little bit of a jerk.

In spite of all the original aspects to this novel, like the setting, the steampunk elements (though I don't believe that added much to the novel, except its necessity for the weapons), the fae-killing and the different types of faerie, the plot of this novel seems familiar. A quest for revenge, an ancient seal about to break, a lost line of warriors, a guy with a lost, tragic love that hardened him to this new girl with a connection to the old, a destiny the protagonist wasn't aware of, the fate of all humanity depending just on her while they're completely unaware that this danger even exists - this is a pretty standard plot for fantasy novels and one that The Falconer followed all the way through. That is not to say that the book is unoriginal, cliched or not entertaining, because that wouldn't be true, but there is a familiar ring to the events in the novel and the overall plot in the story. Also, the novel ends in a huge cliff-hanger, right in the middle of a scene, which bothered me a bit because I believe there are less obvious and forceful ways of making sure your readers stay around for the next book.

The Falconer was surprisingly entertaining and thrilling. It was not exactly what I expected, but I am glad with the final result and impressed of this debut novel. The folklore and the setting were done fantastically, the writing was solid and the action never lets up. I will stick around to finish this series, because, frankly, this is probably one of the best faerie books I've read, in spite of everything else.