ŷ������

It was a cruel trick of the universe, thought August, that he only felt human after doing something monstrous.

PRELUDE
All his life August Flynn wanted to be in FTF, to make a difference, to matter. To live. His father �� Henry Flynn �� prevents crimes in South City during the day by putting Flynn Task Force cadets everywhere �� streets, rooftops, lanes and alleys �� and hunts monsters at night with the help of Sunai �� the most invincible, as the say, kind of monsters �� and August is one of them.
All her life Kate Harker wanted to come back to V-City, to belong, to be like her father. To make him proud. Callum Harker is the "governor" of North City and offers protection to those who are willing to pay. Keeping monsters under the heel is a risky business, but people are ready to give everything for the sake of their own safety or at least for the illusion.
Living on the opposite sides of the wall �� The Seam �� in the world, where violence breeds violence and every crime results in a monster, both August and Kate try to get what they want. But as they move towards their goals, they start to realise there is no such thing as black and white, and sometimes real monsters can be hiding among humans.

VERSE 1
Of Monsters and Men

I

Not with a bang, but with a whimper.
In with gunfire and out with smoke.

August Flynn was born as a monster but isn't deprived of humanity. Being sent to the school under the alias in order to get close to the Harker's only daughter, August finally has other reasons to leave Flynn compound than just to take someone's soul with the music. And in his case it's not an exaggeration. Despite his shy looks, he can easily take souls by playing the violin.
To be honest, August is almost the only likeable character in This Savage Song, even though I can't say we got a lot of character development, so I didn't have a chance to know him better. But he's the only one (apart from his sister and father) who tries to act as humanly as possible, even towards those who don't really deserve it (I'm looking at you, Kate), he's constantly struggling with his nature (I got some vampire-ish vibe here, all those vampires-"vegetarians" trying to live without human blood...(view spoiler)[ and the whole "go dark" thing kind of reminded me of vampires-reapers when they lose control and kill everyone no matter how hard they were trying to stick to the diet (hide spoiler)]) and has a mature voice (unlike someone, Kate).

II

Burning down the church was really a last resort; she’d already broken a girl’s nose, smoked in the dormitories, cheated on her first exam, and verbally harassed three of the nuns. But no matter what she did, St. Agnes Academy kept forgiving her. That was the problem with Catholic schools. They saw her as someone to be saved.
But Kate didn’t need salvation; she simply needed out.

Unlike August, Kate Harker was born as a human but with a huge pinch of monstrosity (if you haven't already figured it out). Being sent from one school to another outside of her father's city, Kate tried to complicate his life and leave him with the only option: to let her come back.
Kate Harker was a difficult character to like. And I didn't. She definitely has daddy issues �� you can easily notice it even while flipping pages, she constantly repeats how she will make her father proud, how she's her father's daughter, yada, yada, yada �� but it doesn't justify her behaviour and attitude. I do understand that she's a teenager, but at some point all this show-off and "I'll show 'em all" started to bore me to death.

(view spoiler)[Her attempts to impress her father ("I drove my spikes into their hearts, and when you find the monster behind this, I want to be the one to kill him, too" �� and what would you do without Sunai?) and that scene with August at the lockers with her "I'm a Harker"?

“You really believe that, don’t you? That this whole city revolves around what you want, because you have money and power and everyone’s too afraid to tell you no.�� He leaned in. “I know it’s hard to believe, Kate, but not everything in this world is about you.��

HA!

I still don't get what was her goal after she finally came back to the city. To do... what? Be right beside her father? To rule the city with him? To be his right hand and help to fight monsters? All that "teen mischief" for this? (hide spoiler)]
I do understand she had a troubled childhood (view spoiler)[�� with her mom dying in front of her and her father being absent 99% of time �� (hide spoiler)] but still. The way she thinks ("By the end of the week, Colton would be hers. After all, if she couldn’t rule a school, she didn’t deserve to run a city") and talks is way too arrogant and spoiled.
Oh. And that "teardrop scar in the corner of her eye"...

(view spoiler)[III

“I am Sunai,�� he said. “I am holy fire. And if I have to burn the world to cleanse it, so help me, I will.��

While August tried to hold on to humanity, Leo Flynn prefered to get rid of it. I had a bad feeling about August's brother from the very beginning: the way he emphasized "when the truce breaks", my uncertainty about Henry (who wasn't Sunai) being the leader of South City, the way Leo spoke about Sunai, as if they were gods. All that righteousness screamed the name of Schwab's Vicious character. But while in Vicious we got a decent amount of character development, Leo seems... flat. His ending was a really fast, anticlimactic one. One minute we learn about his involvement in the uprising, the next one �� he's dead. I like antiheroes/villains playing God, but in Leo's case he didn't really have enough time to show it. And it's sad, since he had potential for more than one book. I'd prefer to see him being alive and trying to capture V-City instead of Sloan.

IV

“People are users. It’s a universal truth. Use them, or they’ll use you.��

Callum Harker was one of those people that were in This Savage Song without really being there. Mostly we heard him through Kate's phone, messages, memories, and after all Harker wasn't exactly the person I expected him to be.
What kind of character was he? Determined? Possesive? Most likely. Smart enough not to fall into monster's trap? I thought so. I still can't believe that Callum Harker �� the one and only man who held the city in fear �� was naive enough to believe his monstrous pet and so easily missed the whole point. While I can totally see why August wanted to be like his father, I can't imagine what Kate saw in hers. Sure, she didn't really know him, since he wasn't there for her, but she still could see that his power was all about money and fear.
The betrayal, the following death... It was just the same as Leo's: fast and disappointing. Yes, it was an important moment for Kate: her idol has finally shown his real face, shown that the worst monsters hid among people �� but overall I couldn't care less about his death.
The thing that pisses me off about his death, though, is that we've never found out how Callum Harker was able to suppress Corsai and Malchai. And now he's dead.

V

Dressed in a tailored black suit, her father’s favorite Malchai looked almost human. He had Callum Harker’s height, if not his build, and Harker’s deep-set eyes, though Sloan’s burned crimson where Harker’s shone blue. But if her father was an ox, Sloan was a wraith, the dark bones of his skeleton just visible through the thin vellum of his skin. With his pallor, Sloan looked sick.
No, thought Kate. He looked dead. Like a corpse on a cold day.

Sloan was such an obvious "bad guy" in the book, that I'm not even sure why he's the one (sort of) alive after all. I liked Kate's idea about him being her father's Malchai, though: the creature Harker helped to create was the one that caused the death of his wife and arranged the betrayal. But is the Malchai strong enough to lead the uprising? He has an advantage, for sure: he was the closest thing to Callum Harker �� but will it be enough? We'll see. (hide spoiler)]

VERSE 2
Monsters here, Monsters there

I

“Monsters, monsters, big and small,
They’re gonna come and eat you all!��

Schwab's initial concept �� violence breeds violence �� is indeed brilliant. Monsters being the consequences of crimes, being the symptoms, while criminals are the real disease. How smart it sounded. But the more I read, the more issues I had with one particular kind of monsters.
While Corsai and Malchai are "usual" monsters that feed on everyone, Sunai aren't: they feed on sinners. (view spoiler)[No wonder Leo saw himself as God! Sunai are the coolest guys you'll ever meet: destructible only in their true form, not being afraid of the sun (sorry, Corsai) and being pretty tolerant to metals (sorry, Malchai), killing criminals not only with music, but also with knives, and when going dark they're like weapons of mass destruction... You'd better not mess with them. Okay, okay, I get it: they're the consequences of the most violent acts, but (hide spoiler)] why give them that many perks? And they're different not only from other monsters, but also from each other.

(view spoiler)[II

All around him, hundreds of voices talked over and under and through one another, layering like music, but the cadence was all wrong, less like classical than jazz, and when he tried to pick the threads apart he wasn’t left with chords, just syllables and laughter and sounds that made no sense.

Whereas Leo and August use instruments to capture their victims, Ilsa uses her voice. It's a small detail, but still. And we never got the explanation about the importance of their instruments. My initial thoughts were that they got the soul out of bodies by playing or singing, but then we learnt that they could easily kill others with usual tools, so what was the point of all this music? My guess is that when music puts a victim into trance, the death is "merciful", painless, unlike stabbing a victim with a knife. But it's just a guess.
The musical part gets even more interesting when we learn that music doesn't really affect innocent people, but it still takes a toll. And what is the toll? What does the music take? I hope we'll get the answer in the second book, 'cause it seems to me it was easier to arrange a concert in the middle of the city with Leo as a rock-star and August being new David Garrett and get rid of monsters just like that. Yes, it would be too easy, but why not?

III

“I could smell the blood on their hands, and then...�� His voice wavered. “I remember feeling so empty. Like there was a black hole inside, something I had to fill and couldn’t. No matter how many people I killed.��

Throughout the book there were many mentions of "going dark". I was 99% sure it looked like an explosion, as if the atomic bomb exploded and burnt everything and everyone aroung the source, but as I got to the final chapters, I realised it wasn't even close. Especially the "can't resist the hunger and don't really care whether a person is innocent or not, a monster or a human" part. How could August resist so easily? And yes, it was easy! Thankfully, we didn't get "August, I love you, please, August, it's me, Kate, you don't want to hurt me" piece, but it's Schwab, so I wasn't really worrying: she doesn't give you romantic scenes, when they're irrelevant. But how? Okay, Kate couldn't die (of course, she was such a bad-ass throughout the book, plus she still had some unfinished business), but how. did. August. resist? Amazing willpower?
As for the true form... Horns? Wings? Mephistopheles? (hide spoiler)]

VERSE 3
Oh, Monster, what's a Sin?

I

No one else could see it, but to August’s eyes, it loomed in the air, a ghostly thing with too many features for a shadow, too few for a man. August knew it for what it was, an echo of violence, a mark of sin. Somewhere in the city, a monster lived and killed because of this man, because of something he’d done.

It may seem that I touched all the major flaws I could see, but the most interesting is yet to come. So here is the question. Who decides whether a person is a sinner or an innocent soul? Who decides if the soul deserves to be marked as a red one? Where is the line between violent and non-violent acts? Is it connected to someone's intentions? To the beliefs? Do you have to cause a death one way or another? Or is it a totally random thing? Violence is a very subjective thing after all.
(view spoiler)[So why wasn't Kate's soul red? Taking into account her record (burning down the church, breaking someone's nose), she's a perfect example of a small ball of violence, isn't she? So where is the line? Yes, she didn't kill anyone (yet), but do you remember the traitor, whose soul was taken by Ilsa? He didn't kill anyone too, he just sold the information (that might or might not had caused the death, we don't really know it), yet he was guilty and his soul was red. So what's the difference? It's a very useful loophole, I must say, in the world full of different laws. (hide spoiler)]

ELEGY
Despite the huge info dump during the first 20% (when I had no idea what was going on and where the plot was going), I still have questions. Considering the fact that This Savage Song is a first book in the duology, I see how nicely it prepared the ground for the second installment. I still had a really nice time, since I was buddy-reading it with my fellow partners in crime: Katerina, Vira and Nastassja �� and I do hope at least some of my questions will find the answers in the sequel.