Crimson Bound by Rosamund Hodge

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BASICS
Title: Crimson Bound
Author: Rosamund Hodge
Release Date: May 5th 2015
Publisher: Balzer + Bray
ISBN: 006222476X
Number of Pages: 448
Genre: Fantasy, Young Adult, Romance

 
MY OPINION 
"In all your life, your only choice", Aunt Léonie said to her once, "is the path of needles or the path of pins."
Rachelle remembered that, the day that she killed her.

Right away I knew, this is the quote I want to start my review with.
What those two paths are exactly about, will be explained later in the book and I really, really liked Hodge's explanation.

“You always have to choose between the path of needles and the path of pins.
When a dress is torn, you know, you can just pin it up, or you can take the time to sew it together. That's what it means. The quick and easy way or the painful way that works.” 

But then I found this quote:

“Her dreams were a tangled mess of blood and shuddering trees”

Which I just had to include in my review. This whole book consists out of amazing quote-worthy sentences. Too many to list them all!
(Maybe one day I'll do a Top Ten: My Favourite Quotes!)

The two main characters were unique in a way. What really gave them a twist, was that they differed so much in their believes and past actions.
One one side, there's Rachelle. She was "marked" by a Forestborn when she was 15 and was left with two options:
Kill somebody in the next three days and become a slave to the Great Forest
or die.
Rachelle made her choice and is still paying the price three years later. Rachelle is haunted by her guilt and when she learns that the Devourer will rise again, she is ready to do everything to stop him form seizing power with his capital D Darkness.
She is dark, twisted and a murderer. She's allowed to be selfish and cruel. I do enjoy books with a ruthless heroine. (Such as Graceling, Throne of Glass or The Hunger Games)

Every day for the last three years, she had thought she deserved to die. She still didn’t want to. She wanted to live with every filthy desperate scrap of her heart.

On the other side, there's Armand, one of the king's bastards. He claims that he was marked by a Forestborn and refused to murder somebody. Yet he is alive. He may not have lost his life but he lost his hands by that refusal. And he's the one Rachelle is ordered to protect. He's seen as a saint for being willing to accept death over saving himself.
They both judge each other for their actions and believes and it's a long way to go until they started to understand each other.


This retelling of Red Riding Hood does not stick with the fairy tale it, it goes beyong that.
A good example for that is Marissa Meyer's The Lunar Chronicles Series.
Those stick so closely to the original fairy tales (Cinderella, Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel) that you can easily guess what will happen next.
That is definitely not the case with Crimson Bound. It's hard to even recognize the fairy tale.
There are no wolves (well, not in the literal sense. Har har.)

This whole story is dark and twisted and gory:

In the darkest shadows of the wood stands a house.
The walls are caulked with blood.
The roof is thatched with bones.
Within that bloody house lived Old Mother Hunger, the first and eldest of all forestborn.

I really liked the picture Hodge drew of the court. They were all so ridiculous, especially the morning gatherings.
It reminded me a lot of the past where royal women had to give birth in front of a whole room of nobility. It was quite a big custom among French royality.
Somewhere I've read that Marie Antoinette was almost killed by the amount of people streaming in her chamber.

Anyway, back to Crimson Bound.
There were two things that bothered me.
1) The ending felt odd
Maybe that's just how I feel but Rachelle and Armand's reunion happended too fast and too forced.

2) The blurb on the cover
It's so weird.

Protect him.
Defend him.
But never love him.
 
It gives one a totally wrong idea of what this book is about. Armand and Rachelle's relationship is put into a completely different light.
Otherwise I really like the cover!

RATING
4 out of 5 stars