This savage song - Victoria Schwab

ISummary:Kate Harker and August Flynn are the heirs to a divided city, a grisly metropolis where the violence has begun to create real and deadly monsters. All Kate wants is to be as ruthless as her father, who lets the monsters roam free and makes the inhabitants pay for his protection. August just wants to be human, as good-hearted as his own father-but his curse is to be what the humans fear. The thin truce that keeps the Harker and Flynn families at peace is crumbling, and an assassination attempt forces Kate and August into a tenuous alliance. But how long will they survive in a city where no one is safe and monsters are real...

My opinion: It's time to review the book from the owlcrate july box.

Oh god, I was so excited to read this book. At the back of the book jacket there is a little poem, that gives me the creep instantly!

Corsai, Corsai, tooth and claw,

Shadow and bone will eat you raw.

Malchai, Malchai, sharp and sly,

Smile and bite and drink you dry.

Sunai, Sunai, eyes like coal,

Sing you a song and steal your soul.

Monsters, monsters, big and small,

They’re gonna come and eat you all.

The beginning of the story reminded me of The Hunger Games. It is a dystopian novel and the story takes place in the city of Verity. The sticking point is, that the city is striked by monsters. They lurk everywhere in the darkness. There are three types of monsters: The Malchai kill people by drinking blood, the Corsai eat flesh and bone and the last and rarest type, the Sunai, kill by stealing the soul of a person. All the monsters are made from crimes, a great idea if you ask me! It reminds me of the quote from Martin Luther King, that violence is a descending spiral.

Verity is devided into two zones. One is ruled by the Flynn-Family and their answer to the problem is easily spoken but hard to transfer: to fight.
The other one is ruled by Callum Harker and he tries to solve the problem with money - people have to pay for his protection. Of course the two sides compete against each other and in this situation we meet our two main characters: Kate and August.
Kate is the daughter of Callum Harker, lost her mother too early and has a lot of anger and sadness inside herself.

"The night Kate Harper decided to burn down the school chapel, she wasn't angry or drunk. She was desperate."

That is the first sentence of the book. Is there a better way to start a book? To make the reader curious? I don't think so ;)

August is one of the rare Sunai but the last thing he wants to be is a monster so he fights against himself.
The Flynns want to spy on the Harkers, so they send August to the same school like Kate.
While August tries to get to know Kate better, strange things happen. It seems like Callum Harker has lost control over the monsters and suddenly Kate and August are on the run - together unintended.

I really love Kate and August. They are unique, profound and very humanly. August even more than Kate, though he isn't even a human being.
Kate misses her mother and wants to be accepted by her father, who doesn't really care for her. So she is a very pensive girl and I like her for that.

"It was a game she sometimes played, ever since she learned about theory of infinite parallels, the idea that a person's path through life wasn't really a line, but a tree, every decision a divergent branch, resulting in a divergent you. She liked the idea that there were a hundred different Kates, living a hundred different lives."

August was the perfect character for the good vs. evil theme. He combines both parts and shows that the world cannot be devided into black an white. There are a lot of grey shades between. And Schwab makes it very easy for us to understand August's diversity of feelings.

"Why would you even want to be human? We're fragile. We die."
"You also live. You don't spend every day wondering why you exist, but don't feel real, why you look human, but can't be."

Furthermore he struggles not only with himself but also with his brother Leo. He is another sunai, accepts it and doesn't fight against it.

"It'll get easier", promised Leo, taking the blade. But August looked downat the corpses, their shadows still, their bodies broken.
"Should it?"

In addition I love the relationship, that develops between August and Kate. First interspersed with distrust, then amicable and in the end a little bit romantic.

“I read somewhere,” said Kate, “that people are made of stardust.”
He dragged his eyes from the sky. “Really?”
“Maybe that’s what you’re made of. Just like us.”
And despite everything, August smiled.

And finally there are also the other characters, that make the story interesting. You will love Ilsa, you will hate Callum. And the end was very surprising and satisfying to me. Can't wait for the next book :)

The only thing I didn't like while reading this book, was the facr that the Sunai were so different from the other two types of monsters. While the Malchai and the Corsai are cruel and brutal, the Sunai kill without any external hurt, without blood. And that is not enough: They only kill sinners. I think that was necessary to make the readers love August, but for me it is a little bit too much romanticising (does this word exist in english? :D Michi I need your help again ;)).

In the end it was nice to read. Fans from urban fantasy and creepy stories will love it.

Would you read this book again? Yes.