Desert Tales: A Wicked Lovely Companion Novel by Melissa Marr

Title: Desert Tales: A Wicked Lovely Companion Novel
Author: Melissa Marr
Publisher: Harper Collins 
Publication Date: October 8, 2013
Rating: 3 stars

Return to the world of Melissa Marr's bestselling series and discover how the events of Wicked Lovely set a different faery tale in motion. . . . Originally presented as a manga series and now available for the first time as a stand-alone novel, Desert Tales combines tentative romance, outward strength, and inner resolve in a faery story of desert and destiny.

The Mojave Desert was a million miles away from the plots and schemes of the Faerie Courts—and that's exactly why Rika chose it as her home. The once-mortal faery retreated to the desert's isolation after decades of carrying winter's curse inside her body. But her seclusion—and the freedom of the desert fey—is threatened by the Summer King's newfound strength. And when the manipulations of her trickster friend, Sionnach, thrust Rika into a new romance, she finds new power within herself—and a new desire to help Sionnach protect the desert fey and mortals alike. The time for hiding is over.- Summary from Goodreads.

I had previously read the Manga version of this story, but it was quite a while ago and I really didn’t remember the plot,  so everything was fresh.

I thought the prologue was awesome, but then the same things that were shown in the prologue were explained in chapter one. I felt like a lot of the book was repetitive and explained a lot of things that I already knew, which, for people who haven’t read the Wicked Lovely series, might be helpful, but to me it was just annoying. Part of the reason that it wasn’t up to par with the other books in the series might be because Marr was rewriting a story that she had already wrote in a different format which confined her to a certain outline and dialogue. Despite all that I did enjoy the book.

The story is set during Radiant Shadows (Wicked Lovely #4) and followed Rika, a former Winter Girl who ran to the Mojave desert when Donia took her place in the curse. The relationship that Rika had with Jayce, a human, felt kind of weak and under developed, but I think that’s because the relationship had more to do with Rika’s character development than the actual relationship itself. The character I found most interesting was Sionnach (shh-knock) a fox fey who was the alpha of the solitary desert fey. The reader really doesn’t know what Sionnach’s going to do or what his motives are so it makes for an interesting character. Other well-known Wicked Lovely character show up, such as Donia and Keenan.  Desert Tales is third-person with multiple points of view like the rest of the Wicked Lovely series.

While Desert Tales is not a fantastic book, it does add on to a fantastic series and continues to expand the world by showing the politics of the solitary fey.

      -Christina