Review ~ The Deathless Girls by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

The second book in the new Bellatrix collection

A creatively curated list of empowering diverse YA novels by leading female voices

Hachette Children Books
19 September 2019

My thanks to the publishers for my copy of this book

On the eve of her divining, the day she'll discover her fate, seventeen-year-old Lil and her twin sister Kizzy are captured and enslaved by the cruel Boyar Valcar, taken far away from their beloved traveller community.

Forced to work in the harsh and unwelcoming castle kitchens, Lil is comforted when she meets Mira, a fellow slave who she feels drawn to in a way she doesn't understand. But she also learns about the Dragon, a mysterious and terrifying figure of myth and legend who takes girls as gifts.

They may not have had their divining day, but the girls will still discover their fate..

What did I think about it..

Stories about the brides of Dracula are not my usual genre but when approached to read and review this re-imagining of an old story by talented writer Kiran Millwood Hargrave, I was delighted to have the opportunity to read a version of a classic vampire story which is aimed at young adult readers.

Seventeen year old twins, Lil and Kizzy, are about to come of age and discover their fate in a divining ceremony  but then something catastrophic happens to their settlement and the twins are abducted and taken by force as the captives of Boyar Valcar who rules his community with cruelty and oppression. Lil and Kizzy, in mourning for all they have lost, are sent to work in the castle kitchens, however, their beauty and feisty nature brings them both to the attention of Boyar Valcar with disastrous consequences.

The author writes well, with an understanding of her target audience, and with imaginative flair for detail, she brings the story to life in lively detail. I enjoyed following Lil and Kizzy's adventures, and particularly Lil's close relationship with Mira, who is a fellow captive, and which adds a very different dimension to the story.

The Deathless Girls brings a nice awareness of the legend to a younger audience and allows a more modern day feminist approach with feisty young women who know their own mind. This is now the second book in the Bellatrix series of YA novels which continues the theme of re-telling a classic in a more modern way.

About the Author

Kiran Millwood Hargrave is an award winning poet, playwright, and bestselling novelist. Her debut novel for children, The Girl of Ink & Stars won the Waterstones Book Prize and the children's Book of the Year at the British Book Awards. Her work has been long and short listed for several other major prizes, including costaAward and th CILIP Carnegie Award. The Deathless Girls is her first novel for Young Adults.

Kiran Millwood Hargrave is a graduate of Oxford and Cambridge Universities and lives by the river in Oxford with her husband and cat.

Twitter @Kiran_MH #TheDeathlessGirls

@hachettekids

About Bellatrix

The Bellatrix collection aims to publish gripping, powerful YA novels by leading female voices. In literature as in life women past and present have countless stories untold, mis-told or simply unheard. The Bellatrix series will range from gothic, to thriller, humour to romance. Each story will be unique re-telling of a classic, given a feminist slant, and connected by one main goal - the passion and determination to tell the whole story.

Author Guest Post ~ Tracey Sinclair

I am delighted to welcome back to Jaffareadstoo

Tracey Sinclair

Author of Angels Falls 

  

Angel Falls Blurb

It isn't easy to surprise Cassandra Bick. When you run a human-vampire dating agency, your colleague is a witch who is engaged to a shifter and your business partner is one of London's most powerful (and sexiest) vampires, there's no such thing as a normal day at the office.

But when a mysterious Dark Dates client brings a dire warning of a new threat to the city's supernatural community, Cass and her friends realise they are up against their deadliest foe yet – and that this time, the danger is far closer to home than they could ever have imagined. 

Sexy, snarky and with more bite than a crypt full of vampires, Angel Falls is the latest in the Dark Dates: Cassandra Bick series. 

Hi Tracey ~ welcome back to Jaffareadstoo...

What is it about your writing that will pique the reader’s interest....?

I never set out to write a series. In fact, I didn’t set out to write genre fiction at all. After having my first two books published by a small press publisher, I had a few ideas in the pipeline, and, while they were brewing, I wrote a fun short story called Dark Dates for a friend who liked vampires. It was just a silly idea – a modern woman running a dating agency for vampires and humans, but living in a world where both humans and vampires are alive to all the clichés that surround the supernatural. But what started out as a throwaway project got its hooks in me, and the Cassandra Bick series was born.

I love writing the Cassandra Bick novels, but the drawback of a first-person protagonist is you see everything from her viewpoint. And as I fell a little more in love with the characters, I decided I wanted to see what they got up to when she wasn’t around. At first, writing a short story was just a marketing ploy – I was inspired by writers like Lee Child and Tess Gerritsen, who often publish ebook short stories to help promote the main novels. But another inspiration was Jim Butcher, who used his Dresden Files short stories to not only explore the world of his characters a bit more, but also to see it from a different angle. So, my first short story in the series – A Vampire Walks into a Bar – followed Cass’ suitors Cain and Laclos when they reluctantly have to team up to defeat a threat to the woman they both care about. It was enormous fun to write – and remains possibly one of my favourite things I’ve written – and since then, I’ve complemented the main novels with a handful of short(ish – they are often more novella length!) stories.

The benefits of these are numerous, for me. From a narrative perspective, I get to play around, and have things happen that don’t affect the central arc of the novels. I can introduce a wider set of characters – or expand on those that only feature briefly in the main books – and I see the main characters from a different point of view. Cass might argue with the men in her life, but she cares about them both: so as a writer, it’s fascinating to play with how other people might see them – whether it’s as arrogant, sexy, mysterious or terrifying. And these excursions have helped me develop the characters, since they now exist in a world beyond the narrow confines of one storyline. The relationship between Cain and Laclos in particular has become richer, funnier and, yes, sexier than I ever anticipated – to the extent that, when I started writing A Vampire in Edinburgh, it was going to be a standalone Cain story, and somehow Laclos ended up crashing the party, turning up uninvited halfway through the plot!

So, while I know some writers (and readers) see short stories as a somehow lesser medium, for me they are a great way to get more out of my characters, and spend more time in a world that has turned out to be far much more engaging than I ever would have imagined.

 Amazon UK : Angel Falls published 13 January 2016

Goodreads

A Vampire in New York and Other Stories: published  21 January 2016

About the author

Tracey Sinclair is an author and editor who lives in Brighton. She’s a massive geek and lover of all things supernatural (and, indeed, Supernatural) and who probably spends way too much of her time on Netflix.

Find more about Tracey and her writing on her website

Follow on Twitter @ThriftyGal

Huge thanks to Tracey for sharing her love of writing with us and for leading us by the hand into London's dark and dangerous world of shifters, vampires and demons..

~***~