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(Orthodox readers, this is not an Orthodox book, despite the title! I’ll talk about this a bit more below but I wanted to make it clear right away.) (Everyone: There are spoilers for Icon below. I couldn’t talk about what I wanted to in this book without spoiling it, I’m sorry, please don’t read any more if this bothers you!)

Oh, friends. This book. However this review turns out, please understand that the temptation to just add that Community “MY EMOTIONS” gif and hit schedule is going to be super high. Genevieve Valentine is really good at making me feel lots of things, it turns out. Also, she writes books that I possibly would not read from anyone else but which are so good that I consider her an auto-read author at this point. I’m pretty sure she could imbue the phone book with strong characters and a tense plot, also that I would like it.

In this case, Icon is a sequel to last year’s Persona. Both are near-future political thrillers, about the same main characters, Suyana and Daniel. I finished Persona and was astonished that both of them made it out of the book alive.

Well, they don’t both make it out of Icon alive.

Icon has a sense of narrative inevitability from page one, and a sense of tension and doom that increases to an almost unbearable extent over the course of the book. I both knew and felt that things were gong to end badly. I kept finding myself holding my breath until the most immediate danger had passed. And yet, I kept reading, even knowing I was going to cry.

I cried so much.

Suyana and Daniel are completely compelling, partly because Valentine has a keen sense for what to tell us and what to leave out. Asking the reader to fill in the blank spaces makes us more invested, keeps us caring, keeps us turning the page. In Persona, we had a sense of them as unlikely partners. Here they’re separated. But they keep fighting and fighting, for the soul of the IA, for the people they care about, for each other. They never get a break or a rest, they hardly have a single moment alone together, and yet their relationship is so potent that it becomes the center around which the story turns.

(I also love that Suyana gets to be calculating without being heartless.)

But Valentine is also excellent at throwing her characters into tense, impossible situations. In Girls at the Kingfisher Club and Persona, they manage to win some sort of space, peace, love. Icon, on the other hand, refuses any way out. I have always thought that West Side Story is more tragic than Romeo and Juliet, because one of them lives and has to go on living. In Icon, not only does Daniel die, and in dying save them, but Suyana “wins” at a horrific personal cost. She ends the book almost entirely alone, muddied by politics. She has done the right thing for the IA and therefore the world. It’s not exactly a bleak ending. But it is a hard one.

Now, I do have to say that I’m not a fan of the title. I understand what Valentine is trying to conjure–the complexity boiled down into a symbol. But since I am Orthodox and the word icon has a primarily religious connotation for me, and since that religious understanding is quite different than Valentine’s usage, it just…doesn’t work for me. I realize this is a personal issue, and one not every reader will share.

I’d recommend this book for people at the unlikely intersection of: invested in Hiddleswift (I have not even gotten into Suyana’s fake relationship with Ethan!), interested in politics, and the red carpet, and into Code Name Verity. (Weirdly enough, I feel like I know multiple people who fit that profile.) Actually, you don’t have to be interested in all of those things, or maybe even any of them. You just have to be willing to let these characters in and then let them break your heart a little.

Back in middle school, when I was discovering fantasy books and reading through my school library, one of the very first series that I found and devoured was Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising sequence. The library initially only had the first two or three books, but over the course of my time there, the librarian gradually bought the rest of the series. I’m pretty sure she bought them for me, because she was a kind person and quite probably quite literally a life-saver for me.

Anyway, that’s all to say that these are Important Books to me. But I had never read them as an adult. So recently when I acquired a set of the books, I decided to re-read them all.

Over Sea, Under Stone: It was a bit odd re-reading this one, because I remember loving it so, so much. And, to be honest, it grated. First, all of the Drews do such stupid things (from my lofty & adult point of view). Oh yes, let’s go off in separate directions. Oh yes, let’s not tell the adults where we’re going. Argh! Second, there’s the relentless putting down of Jane, usually with the choice words, “just like a girl.” Double argh! And Barney is a bit of a Charles Wallace–awfully clever and too old for his years, but in a vaguely annoying way. What there is, however, is atmosphere, in heaps and spades. The sense of rising tension is amazing, and the setting plays into the story wonderfully.

The Dark is Rising: With this one, on the other hand, I remember being seriously annoyed by the church scene the last time I read it. And, you know, I don’t agree with Cooper’s characters, but it didn’t overshadow the whole book for me. Again, atmosphere! The creeping, rising sense of things being not-quite-right is so amazing. Especially in the beginning, when Will doesn’t know what’s happening, but then again with the snow. I also loved the Stantons; they’re so full of warmth and humor, grounding the book as they ground Will. The Drews, at least in the first book, are a little too one-note, but the Stantons feel alive and real.

Greenwitch: This is an odd book, and vaguely frightening in a way that the others aren’t. I haven’t yet pinpointed why I feel this way, but I do. I think maybe it’s the figure of the Greenwitch, which seems so eerie and alien. More of the “Oh, Jane” sentiment, but it’s balanced a bit by Jane being the only one who can resolve the problem. All in all, not my favorite in the series.

The Grey King: Again, this was an odd book to re-read! I had it so firmly in my head as the book with Bran, which made me start loving Wales, that it came as quite a shock to find Bran an enigmatic and ambiguous figure for most of the book. Of course there’s more atmosphere, because that’s the way Cooper is. And, of course, the beautiful descriptions of Wales and the bits of Welsh that began fascinating me back in the day. I do wonder if in some ways the narrative might have been more effective if it had been more from Bran’s point of view, but I’m not sure about that.

Silver on the Tree: There are some beautiful descriptions here, and I found the way Cooper shifted between real world and different times via concrete images, like the swans very earl in the book. Also, she creates the same sense of nature’s relentlessness as in The Dark is Rising, except this time with the summer heat rather than the snow of midwinter. Also, Jane is much more a real person, which was immensely relieving to my feelings. I liked this one much more than I expected (the ending overshadowed the rest of the book in my memory), but I will say that the beginning of the Lost Land section didn’t work as well for me–it seemed very long and like it lost the momentum of the plot. I did love the way she mixes in Welsh history and myth, with Gwyddno and Glyndwr. (Also, GLYNDWR!) However, I still hate the ending. I still think it leaves the book without integrity. Because forgetting is presented as kindness, whether the characters want it or not, and I do not believe that. In a certain way, I have more trouble with the John Rowlands resolution than with the main characters. Regardless, I view that choice as a mistake.

However, just as I was re-reading Silver on the Tree, R.J. Anderson linked to an after-series fanfic, and I read it after I was done. It’s now my headcanon end of the series, so if you would like to read it and make it yours: “all over these eyes a storm is rolling over”.

It was both a weird and wonderful experience re-reading these books. It was interesting to note how much my perception of them had changed in certain ways. And yet a lot of what I resonated with, I resonated with again.