Reading With Tyler

Name: A Stage Set For Villains
Series: Stand Alone
Author: Shannon J. Spann
Publisher: Penguin / Mayhem Books
Format: Hardback – Waterstones SE
Genres: Young Adult, Romantasy
Spice Rating: 🌶️

Rating:

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

Review:

The theatre girl in me was immediately called to arms by the premise of this book. Theatre magic. I mean the back of the book alone was enough to draw me in (and have I praised the backs of books recently? Because I much prefer them to blurbs when they’re done right!)

“The mortals made a treaty
To keep the Players south

And when the treaty ended
A wall to keep them out

And if the wall should crumble
Then marks will keep us safe

And if our marks should fail us
Gods have mercy on our fate”

I dropped everything to read it, and fully expected this to be a 5 star read. I’ll talk towards the end about what meant it wasn’t a 5 star read (and honestly – you’ll probably say ‘that’s a you issue’ and you’re likely not wrong, but still!). Let’s talk about what we loved though!

We follow Riven who was cursed as a child by a Player and was essentially slowly dying as a result – she is however a marked child which means the Player’s can’t use their craft on her, but also it means she can’t enter in the compeition just announced… An opportunity to take a Players immortality for yourself and to join the Playhouse! It seems like Riven’s only oportunity to actually beat the curse placed on her, and live… Though she has no intention of actually joining the playhouse.

I can’t explain how refreshing this felt to read. Bare bones, it doesn’t sound like anything unique – a girl wronged as a child, has an opportunity to get revenge on whoever wronged her – but Shannon’s concept really was unique and felt truly refreshing. I had a great time with this! And the characters! Jude is the Playhouse’s Lead and I’m seeing a lot of comparisons to the fox character from Zootopia and that absolutely hits the nail on the head and makes me giggle every time I think about it. Jude needs attention to live, he thrives on it, loves it, yearns for more of it. The other Player’s aren’t so different! But each of the Players felt very unique and I loved each of the ones we spend time with.

I also loved the relationship that was building between Riven and Jude, I was such a champion of it! But due to the nature of the book, it was honestly hard to tell if it was something I should have been cheering for or not… because actors, man! They know how to hide their true intentions…

I have tried to be very careful with spoilers in this review, because this is one of those books where I think you can very easily reveal something that changes someones expereience reading A Stage Set For Villains! And I really don’t want to do that, so let’s have a little spoiler discussion, because there are some things I simply have to talk about.

So if I loved it this much, why didn’t I give it the 5 stars? I couldn’t wrap my head around two things. That was the random pieces of script text throughout. At first I thought it was a way of indicating that all spoken language in the Playhouse was a script (heh, clever), but it was only select lines that were formatted as script? So I don’t know if I’m just not clever enough to piece together the puzzle pieces, or if this is some kind of interpretation that I just didn’t get.

And then finally, touched on in the spoiler section – once I finished the book I did have a moment where I felt warm and fuzzy and then immediately confused… I’m probably going to have to do a reread in the future if I decide it bothers me too much, but I’m just not exactly sure what entirely happened at the end… Though I loved the epilogue (like I said, it made me feel warm and fuzzy!).

Immediately after finishing I did write a review for fable where I commented on how some of the abilities the Players had was hard for me to follow – but I did say that this was likely to be reading the books in smaller chunks than I would have liked to. I stand by this – for me, especially when something is more unique, if I’m not reading it in either large chunks or even better in one sitting, then I do lose some of the information and understanding between sittings… and as I mentioned, A Stage Set For Villains felt really unique to me, so I only really did myself a disservice for not reading it in larger chunks (but I was impatient and wanted to start it immediately!).

So, I settled on the 4.5 star rating! I couldn’t give it a 4 or lower because it was so damn close to perfect and I really do think my issues with it are probably down to my own brain not being fully engaged? Regardless, I loved this and the characters and I do not regret prioritising it over my TBR in February!

“I never really cared for the tragedies.”