Previous book here.
This is the book in the series that fans have been waiting for: the one where Big Changes happen and Fort is finally circumstantially forced to grow up all the way....in the vampire way.
Things start out slow at first, with the book starting out with Fort, Suze, and assistant Loren meeting refugee succubi from Las Vegas who are fleeing the skinwalkers who slaughtered the rest of their population. Succubi don't have much to recommend them in this universe--they're not exactly the most appealing folk on any level, they're obviously broke, and when they feed on people repeatedly, they get syphilis. Fort's a sympathetic guy and even cleans out his entire savings to help them out and ah, asks those accompanying him to kick in a few bucks. But arguing the point with his relatives goes about as well as you'd expect, with Prudence being "No way" (and frankly, I kinda agree with her, there's really no benefit to having people who can cause an STD epidemic around) and Chivalry being "don't really care, could go either way, whatever." The usual tiebreaker, Madeline, however... says they're going to need to figure this out for themselves, and if they can't, then maybe the succubi will have to wait for awhile.
In other news, Fort and Suze's budding romantic relationship is going well, with him giving her a "What does the fox say?" shirt for Christmas (she hates it) and a job at a karaoke bar that the Hollis girls love, and her, well.... this is how Loren finds out about it.
"She surprised me with it by hiring someone to break into my car, take it to a chop shop, install the new stereo, and bring it back.”
“You're not sounding appropriately appreciative of the awesomeness of my gift presentation.”
“It was a great present, and I really was happy to not to have it installed. I just wish that the installer hadn't permanently broken the passenger door while doing it, and stolen my tire iron, cell phone charger, and flashlight.”
“No one likes an ungrateful gift recipient.”
“They broke the passenger door?” (Loren)
“Not too badly. They just broke the lock pin, so you can't unlock the passenger door without the key any more.”
“So I can't open my door from the inside?” (Loren)
“No.”
“So you now essentially have a kidnapper-mobile?”
“Some people would regard that as an added feature.”
“Yes, Suze. But those people would be kidnappers.”
I kind of want to see the kidnapper-mobile as a plot point in the future now.
Anyway, there's also some added weirdness when Fort finds out that Suze is charging his brother for overnight visits--poor Chiv thinks Fort needed extra bodyguarding or something and then is SUPER embarrassed when he finds out what happened. Fort is ticked at Suze and says so, she basically says she did it because she could get away with it, but didn't mean to hurt his feelings. While these two do have disagreements in this book, they do manage to resolve them maturely--so good for them! Even though Fort does think Suze going fox at certain moments (i.e. sleeping, especially one moment where he finds her in a really weird position) is kind of weird, her sister Keiko says she's envious of how Suze can be herself around him--so it's also flattering.
But all of this fun gets super serious when Madeline's time to die comes. Prudence has been expecting to be sole heir and ruler of all--and any reader is already screaming about how this would be a terrible idea and she'd just end up slaughtering everyone in the territory. However, Madeline is smarter than that, and her final deathbed wish is that all three kids rule the territory together. Which I totally agree with, but...all readers know that since Prudence and Fort think oppositely most of the time and Chivalry is dedicated to the path of the mushball middle (or just not upsetting what his mother set up), most of the time they end up in a total stalemate. The only thing they ever end up agreeing on is getting rid of a pornographically carved staircase, and even then Chivalry balks at first about getting rid of fine art.
“Therefore, I believe that we should not move from this table until we can come to a unanimous consensus on one issue.”
“If Julie Andrews had been male and a vampire who dated back to the Civil War, this was what sitting at the table with her would've been like. I could only count my blessings that Chivalry had always considered spontaneous singing outside an opera house to be incredibly vulgar; otherwise I could quite easily see him try to motivate togetherness through a Disney-style song and dance number.”
Anyway.... as Fort becomes various races' go-to-guy for actual assistance (the Neighbors want to start up a breeding program again and some of them are homicidal, Ambrose the witch needs immediate relocation, the ghouls are being driven out of business by a fancy grocery store and can't afford their tithe, the metsan kunigas want more of a say, the kitsune want to keep their independence....), he becomes more and more determined to actually Do Something About This Stuff, and starts thinking it's easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission of his siblings. Plus it might just no longer be doable to keep his low-rent jobs. But he's not the only one thinking that after awhile, which leads to Fort deciding to force change on his siblings, like it or not!
In addition to losing his mother, it's time for Fort to lose his last remaining host parent--the fatal way--go full-bore vampire, and start drinking blood, especially directly from the tap. None of this is something Fort's ever wanted to do, but he does an excellent job of manning up here. He and his father have one last, good conversation, which is mysterious--Madeline might have been designing for a rebel baby, and Fort is certainly that. While his siblings are adorably super helpful about his feeding issues--giving him take-home containers of blood and Prudence even offers up her current blood donor again--Fort's going to have to figure out how he's going to handle it, and he does. And good for him.
This is an excellent coming-of-age novel. Okay, so the whole series counts as this really, but especially this book. Fort continues to figure out how to actually govern the territory in a decent manner, and he's horrified at how pretty much everyone else hides in their own little groups, living in fear. By the end of the book I was thinking that Fort's gonna become the most beloved guy in New England at the rate he's going, for actually standing up and doing his best to stop the shenanigans that his mother let pass with a blind eye, and that his siblings would do the same about.
“This can't keep going, Dan. I mean, we can't possibly stay in a situation where people have to thank me for not massacring them.”
I'm giving this four and a half stars, it's near epic. GO FORTITUDE! You rock!
Quote Corner:
- “I'm going to tell you about something very important that I learned about from watching lots of TV shows about spies—it's called compartmentalization. Bad things happen, Fort, and people get hurt. But you need to limit your efforts to the people who are most important to you, or you'll just get burned out or rubbed out.”-Suze
- “I don't want you to change, Fort. I'm not trying to nag you into not caring. I like who you are right now, and I'm not going to suddenly try to remake you just because I've lifted tail for you. I just don't want you to end up like a marshmallow Peep in the microwave of the world.”-Suze
- "'Dan tied your tie, didn't he?" -Suze
“I might've outsourced some aspects of my appearance, yes. But in an entirely managerial sense.”-Fort
“He made use of local artisanal talent.”-Dan
“This is an organic, farm-to-table tie knot." -Fort - "I knew for a fact that Suze had, in fox form, peed on every one of Buttons's favorite spots, just to piss him off. It was kind of hard to figure out how I was supposed to respond to that one. Discussions of relationship boundaries, after all, so rarely involved actual urination boundaries."
- “And you, my last born, my rebel, fool, and foreseer both.”--Madeline to Fort
- During the staircase debate, Prudence points out Madeline's Covert Pervert tendencies, especially when she got a ton of dirty Egyptian artwork that she insisted on decorating with before Fort's birth.“We'd be sitting in that room trying to have tea with callers, and none of those poor women could take their eyes off the wall mural of a fully erect pharaoh about to sodomize some poor handmaid. And do not even get me started on just how many individual pieces seemed to focus on male masturbation.”
- “Let's not give me a medal for just deciding not to act like a complete dick and ignore problems. I mean, I haven't gotten a damn thing done yet, Valentine. I don't think that 'good intentions' counts as an accomplishment.”-Fort
- “I got so proud when you tried to dodge that punch.” -Suze
- “We all have to get real jobs eventually, Fort. No one can do shitty postgrad jobs forever.”-Suze
- “Hey! I didn't get to punch a single dam elfling!”-Suze
- “Prudence, are your suggestions ever not based on mass murder?” -Fort (No. NEVER.)
- Fortitude Scott—Holy Shit, We're Glad You're Not Your Sister.
- “You don't have to thank me, Fort. It made me happy to help you. Isn't that something?” -Suze
- "Though perhaps the staircase remains our best moment of unity.”--Prudence
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