Monsters of Verity Duology Full Review!

Over the past week, I was wrapped up in the in the Monsters of Verity duology, This Savage Song and Our Dark Duet, both by Victoria Schwab. In two days, I devoured these books, and felt my heart fill with the pure joy of having read them. I was never planning on doing a full review on this blog, but I loved them both so much that I felt it was necessary.

This books are amazing. I haven't cried while reading a book in a while, and these books did their job of running me through every emotion humanly (and monster-ly) possible. I knew I wanted to start reading Schwab's books at some point in the coming year, and I had always thought it was going to be the Darker Shade of Magic series that got me there, but man, these books just changed everything for me.

Now, like some of my other reviews, this does contain *spoilers*! And while I feel many people have read it, despite it being relatively new, just warning those who haven't!

Starting out with This Savage Song, it opens with a prelude of Kate Harker and August Flynn living out their different lives. August, on the South side of the Seam, the border running it's course through the middle of the city of Verity. And Kate, setting fire to her boarding school in an attempt to get her father to bring her back home, to Verity. August is one of the three types of monsters that are created through acts of violence. Corsai, who eat the raw and bones of people, Malchai, who are basically vampires, and Sunai, what August is, who play a song and steal people's souls.

The city of Verity is divided into two territories, the South, run by the Flynn's, where they are fighting for the greater good of both humans, and monsters who want to help, and the North, run by the Harker's, where Callum Harker keeps monsters on a leash to use as a weapon against the Flynn's and has people buy their safety.

Kate and August come from too totally different worlds, and this is what makes them such a perfect pair. Right off the bat, I knew that Kate was going to be the antithesis of August -- she is brooding and violent and does what she needs to get what she wants. August just wants to be loved by people, and fit in. But that it exactly what makes their story so stunning.

All August wants to be is human, and I think that was one of the most heartbreaking things to witness through the eyes of his character. August basically kills people who have created monsters in order to feed, but he starves himself repeatedly just so he can be a normal person. Since he is a Sunai, he uses music to take peoples souls, so he plays the violin. Leo, his older brother, and Ilsa, his sister, represent the two sides of August in a way, and it is really intriguing to see how his behaviors manifest when they are around. August is just this perfect, pure little munchkin, and he was, hands down, my favorite character in the book.

Side note, when he takes that cat in, after killing it's owner, and puts him in his coat to carry home and names him Allegro (!!!!), it was actually the cutest thing in the entire world.

Kate, on the other hand, just wants to be respected by her father. Her mother was killed in a car crash (one you later find out was caused by Sloan, Callum Harker's henchman-malchai), and her father keeps sending her to bording schools outside of Verity to keep her "safe". Like previously mention, Kate finallly gets brought back to Verity after setting fire to her boarding school. Kate is harsh words and loaded guns, but despite her jagged edges, there is something really lovable about her passion and take-no-prisoner's attitude.

When August and Kate finally meet, Kate at her new boarding school, August sent there undercover to keep an eye on her, it turns into this perfect little world of boy meets girl. As their story begins to entangle, their lives being saved by one another on multiple occasions, and their sojourns turning more lethal than adventurous, their friendship grows in this really perfect way. It's a little broken, and I think that was what made it work as well as it did. They both had this part of them that wasn't totally healed, they both had prejudices, and they both wanted to be something they weren't, and then they are thrown together in order to save the place they both call home.

One thing I especially liked about this relationship, was that it was platonic. I thought that Schwab did a really great job of building up a relationship between a boy and a girl without making it romantic. Every thing that happened between them that could've been construed as romantic, dissolved into their edgy relationship, that I thought fit really well for them.

Another thing that I felt really made this story unique was how much music had influence over it. Kate was always listening to music in her non-deaf ear as a sort of coping mechanism. And August is obviously someone who's music is apart of them. I thought that this idea really blossomed into something that made the story that much more incredible, and different from so many of the other stories that could be placed in this catagory.

Watching them argue and fight and stand up for one another was really incredible. In the last couples of scenes, where they are at the log cabin, and August is basically dying because he hasn't eaten, and Kate is just trying to hold everything together, and the FTF (which stands for Flynn Task Force, which I'm pretty sure Schwab doesn't mention in the first book, but does in the second) shows up and literally all of this sh*t goes down. And Kate accidentally kills a man. And suddenly her soul was tainted and August is like Kate, you idiot, why did you do that, and Sloan captured them (because it wasn't actually the FTF, psych!) -- it was like watching a blockbuster. I was so emotionally invested, I couldn't believe it.

And then when you found out that Leo was actually working with Sloan in order help the monsters overtake Verity?? Oh my god, I was like, PLOT TWIST. But when Sloan was beating August to death in order to make him go dark (which is basically turning into the monster version of himself, where he looses most of his control), since that is the only way to kill a Sunai (this is also where you find out that Ilsa is dead - accept that she isn't dead, Sloan just cut her vocal chords she can't speak or sing). So Leo comes in and is like this isn't part of deal, and kills Sloan by stabbing a huge metal rod through his back. And the Leo is like you have to kill Kate, but instead August kills Leo -- it was like the most intense 30 pages of my life. I was surprised at how main supporting characters, who had decent roles, where killed off so quickly and without abandon.

And at the end, Kate shoots her father (wicked intense, I know, even though it was only in the leg), but August refuses to let her kill him. Instead he does, for her. And it was kind of the sweetest and weirdest favor between friends, but he was saving her soul. Because at least, for the time being, she was just an accidental murderer.

This book, you guys, was just the most perfect combination of everything I want from a fantastical story. It had so much heart, and ended on such a perfect cliffhanger that I was like, buy ODD now. I was just so utterly amazed at how Schwab created this story.

Moving on to Our Dark Duet, this book made me cry all of my tears. I was so dehydrated after this. Kate is in Prosperity fighting monsters, after she left Verity at the end of TSS, where she discovers a new breed of monster (coined the Chaos Eater), that feeds of off mass violence. She gets infected by it, and realizes that it turns her into an angry being (more so than she already is, am I right?), and every time she looks into the mirror, she can see the monster, and it's like some Eleven from Stranger Things sh*t, like her nose starts bleeding and everything. But she decides she has to venture back to Verity after learning that it is heading that way. She leaves her group of monster hunters and struggles her way back to Verity. I thought Schwab's way of presenting the monster's thoughts in Kate's head, through a sort of poem-y formation, worked exceptionally well.

August, on the other hand, is now commander of the FTF, as it takes in refugees from the North side, since it is now over run by monsters (due to Sloan being actually not dead because the Malchai that spawned from Kate's murder, named Alice, after Kate's mom, which, like, wow, pulled the rod out, resurrecting him since it never hit his heart - come on, Leo). The political climate in this book was so well done. You could feel the tension building, not only on each side of the seam, but through Verity as a whole. I was thoroughly impressed at the amount of world building that occurred in ODD, especially because Verity was already considerably fleshed out in TSS.

But back to August, he is loosing his want to be human, which is literally the saddest thing to see, from killing so many people (who, in all seriousness, had tainted soul and probably deserved it). But strange things are starting to happen within Verity. Members of the FTF are starting to kill each other with no motives, and no reason to believe it came from an outside source. And there is almost a stalemate as neither the North nor South has made a big attack, despite their resources.

Once Kate and August find each other, it was really fascinating to watch how August, who had previously been the humane (in some ways) one of the two, need to be humanized by Kate. It is clear that without that dynamic the two of them are kind of lost. And there was a moment where August opens up to Kate and Kate opens up to August - and they kiss.

Now. I was under the impression that their relationship had stayed platonic throughout the entirety of the duolougy, but boy, was I wrong. Don't get me wrong, it doesn't turn into hot and heavy with Kate and August. Basically, they kiss, and August turns into a Dementor, nearly sucking Kate's soul out. And despite me having no initial want for a romantic relationship between the two, it was a really sad moment, since it became clear that they could never have a relationship like that.

As the war turmoil rises, so does a lot of the other tensions in this book. The dynamic between Sloan and Alice, Alice and Kate, Kate and August, August and Soro (the new Sunai, who is also a gender neutral character!), Soro and Kate, Kate and the FTF, and August and his family. All of these work together to create a massive ending, on that was bloody and harrowing, but really inspiring, in a bizarre sort of way.

The Chaos Monster, true to it's name, kills many of the FTF, and Sloan is killed. August saves Henry Flynn from his capture, Ilsa dies (which was so sad), but she blows up herself in order to blow up the Chaos eater, and instantly August run back to where Kate was left with Alice. They were fighting each other, and Kate kills Alice, but Alice stabs Kate.

And this scene literally broke my heart. Just watching as Kate was bleeding out and August was trying to convince her, and himself, that he could save her, but instead Kate asks if the souls he takes stay with him. And there is just this moment where you know whats happening, and they know what's happening, but you're hoping that Victoria Schwab wouldn't do that to you, but jeeze, did she. And watched August take Kate's soul was just heart-wrenching. I was physically crying and on the of full-blown hyperventilating. But there was something perfect about this ending. Seeing everyone ready to rebuild Verity, and Kate's impact on August, and him ready to play, not to kill, but to soothe the hearts of those around him.

There are very few books that I can say made cry as hard as I did. But fewer than that, books that when I talk about them, I can feel this my breaths getting shorter and my lungs filling up with whole-hearted excitement. And even rarer than that, can I say they were from the same series. This Savage Song and Our Dark Duet are two of the most amazing novels that I have ever read. They were original, they were emotional, the writing itself was lyrical and finely honed, I enjoyed reading these books so much that I can't even describe it. But I've tried my best to convey my thoughts here, although, there was just so much that happened that it hard to give thoughts other than my immense love for these novels, this story, and most importantly, these characters. Schwab, in her author's notes writes: "This book nearly killed me.", and I can certainly say, that it nearly killed me too.

"We are the darkest acts made light." - Victoria Schwab,This Savage Song

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