Book reviews by Mobilism's Book Review team
Oct 10th, 2014, 5:51 pm
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TITLE: Exquisite Captive (Dark Caravan Cycle #1)
AUTHOR: Heather Demetrios
GENRE: Young Adult Urban Fantasy
PUBLISHED: 07/10/2014
RATING: ★★
PURCHASE LINKS: Amazon
MOBILISM LINK: Mobilism

Review: First off, never, ever, EVER call your book Exquisite Captive. All it does is make me think you've written some horribly rape-y 'romance' (I use the term 'romance' extremely loosely) wherein some poor girl/woman is kidnapped and eventually falls in love with her captor.

WHAT DO YOU KNOW, THAT IS PRECISELY WHAT OCCURRED.

To give Demetrios some credit, it's a bit more complicated than that. Sort of.

Nalia (it is never a good sign when I have to go look up the names of the main characters mere hours after I finished the book) is a jinni; specifically, the last of her all-female, all-powerful caste who once ruled Arjinna, the jinni realm. However, some years ago the super-evil Ifrit showed up and murdered everybody but Nalia, and in her escape Nalia was captured and sold in the 'dark caravan' of the series title - the slave trade wherein jinni are sold to extremely rich humans. Since then, Nalia has been enslaved to Malek, a man who controls most of Earth from behind the scenes and is pretty damn awful; before the story starts he's spent most of the last three years torturing her.

BUT THEN, OH, THE HUNKY LEADER OF THE JINNI RESISTANCE SHOWS UP. WHATEVER WILL HAPPEN NEXT? YOU'LL NEVER GUESS.

Of course you can guess. Rafia (or Rajia or whatever his name is) falls in love with Nalia, despite the fact that her caste were horrible totalitarian rulers and she represents everything he's fought against his entire life. Nalia falls in love right back despite the fact that he's merely a lowly peasant and supremely irritating.
“Who sent you?” she asked.

A corner of his lips turned up. “I sent myself. I’m sure it’s hard for you to imagine a Djan with free will, but I assure you, it’s possible.”

“Who are you, serfling?” Nalia asked.

*bangs head against wall repeatedly*

But what about Malek? Well, in an attempt to trick him into giving her a chance to escape, Nalia pretends to return his feelings when he declares himself in love with her. Or at least very fond of her. Something. Despite the fact that he's repeatedly almost killed her and routinely demeans her, Nalia finds herself becoming confused about how much of her act is actually an act.
“How did you sleep?” he asked. Malek took her hand and she smiled at him, all butterflies and sunsets and sparkling lights.

To be fair, it's made very clear that this is Stockholm Syndrome on poor Nalia's part, for which I was extremely grateful.
More than ever, she wanted to make Malek hurt. Make him pay for thinking he could own her for a billion pieces of paper with pictures of dead Americans on them. These past few days, she’d almost believed that he had come to care for her. She hadn’t realized she was starving for kindness and affection and the feel of someone else’s skin on her own until Malek started giving her these things. It had awakened a hunger in her that Nalia hadn’t realized she’d had.

But how could she have let herself think he was more than the monster her very core had always known him to be? Malek didn’t love her, she knew that now—if he held even a sliver of real feeling for her, he would have set her free. And if he was worth one ounce of her affection, he never would have bought her in the first place.

Even better is the scene near the end of the book, where Nalia is able to finally confront Malek about everything he's done. This is probably the only scene which I actually paid attention for; I may have cheered a little bit!
“Do you want to know what it feels like, Malek, to be stuffed into a bottle your master wears around his neck, to be alone in the dark for months, with no air, iron poisoning your lungs, in a place where the only company you have is the memory of your mother saying the prayer for the dead as machine guns rip into her?”

She drew closer, her eyes never once leaving his. Malek stared at her, transfixed, the gun lowering to his side.

“You thought, what?” she whispered. “That I could love you? That we were going to live some happy life together because you’d suddenly decided you wanted me in your bed?”

He flinched, as though she’d slapped him, but she kept going.

“You tortured me. For years. I was a child and you took me away from my homeland. You made me grovel and beg for mercy when I wasn’t your perfect little slave. You treated me like a fucking dog, and I’m supposed to love you because of this?”

Nalia tore the lapis lazuli necklace from her throat, her lips now inches from his.

“I will never love you.”

See, that? That is a great scene. I loved getting to see Nalia finally get to reclaim her sense of self, her autonomy, and put Malek in his place. It was wonderful!

In fact, Demetrios is in many ways a wonderful writer. Her descriptive passages were almost always a joy to read, and I simply adored it when she had a chance to really get into writing Nalia's magic...
Nalia spread her arms, opened her mouth, and gave herself over to Lathor, goddess of water.

If she weren’t a slave, Nalia could stay here forever—dash herself against the rocks and kiss a surfer’s neck as he rode the waves of her, or bathe in creamy moonlight and dance with jellyfish. Sailors would look on her with longing, and lightning would strike through her heart, causing no pain, when storms raged above the sea. Here there was no Haran or Raif or Malek. No invisible humans or memories of the past. Just the endless rhythm of ancient waters and the low rumble of beasts in its blackened depths.

She was the current that carried boats on its back and the foam that slept on sandcastles. She was the roar and the whisper and the stillness.

She was nothing.

She was everything.

However, these beautiful passages couldn't quite save this novel from the utter predictability of the plot, or the very two-dimensional characters. Or the insta-love. The entirety of Exquisite Captive takes place over three or four days, but in that time, Nalia half falls for Malek and and completely falls for Raif (sorry, looks like I got the name wrong up above after all), to the point where Raif actually goes ahead and calls her his soulmate...
Nalia was his rohifsa: the song of his heart, his soulmate.

NO.

NO.

NO.

WE DO NOT USE THE S-WORD THREE DAYS AFTER MEETING SOMEONE YOU'VE BEEN RAISED TO HATE. NOPE. NOPE. SO MUCH NO. ROMEO & JULIET MADE IT VERY CLEAR THAT THAT ENDS BADLY.

Then there is the extremely clunky world-building (although perhaps in later books it will be explained whether the jinni realm actually ends at the horizon, as is stated - which makes no kind of sense - or whether the jinni merely believe there isn't anything beyond their own land), with talking griffons, unicorns, and phoenixes mentioned at random, and evil villains that are completely, totally evil, yes sir ma'am don't you worry, no moral qualms about killing the bad guys here. I liked that the jinni culture seems to be matriarchal (at least, their ruling caste were all-female, although now they're gone), but the implications of that were never really followed through on. Demetrios gets some points for incorporating a fair bit of mythology, such as references to Solomon and Marids, but not enough to keep me from cringing at the different jinni castes being colour-coded (yes, your eye colour is a direct reflection of your element if you are a jinn, apparently), nor could it keep me from raging at the utter travesty that is the only female friendship in the book, that of Nalia and Lev-something. It's not even a relationship; it's a pathetic, wishy-washy thing that barely deserves to be called an acquaintance.

Can you tell I'm mad at this book?

Despite its title, Exquisite Captive was packed full of potential; not least in the form of Demetrios' undeniable skill at turning a pretty phrase. I suspect her next book - or at least, her next series - will be excellent. But I can't, in all honesty, encourage anyone to pick this one up. It has its good points, definitely. But the final pages had me wishing I could ask for the last eight hours of my life back. For me, at least, this one was pretty much a waste of time.
Oct 10th, 2014, 5:51 pm