V.E. Schwab

#1 New York Times Bestseller * An Amazon Best Book of the Year There's no such thing as safe in a city at war, a city overrun with monsters. In this dark urban fantasy from acclaimed author Victoria Schwab, a young woman and a young man must choose whether to become heroes or villains--and friends or enemies--with the future of their home at stake. The first of two books, This Savage Song is a must-have for fans of Holly Black, Maggie Stiefvater, and Laini Taylor. Kate Harker and August Flynn are the heirs to a divided city--a city where the violence has begun to breed actual monsters. All Kate wants is to be as ruthless as her father, who lets the monsters roam free and makes the humans pay for his protection. All August wants is to be human, as good-hearted as his own father, to play a bigger role in protecting the innocent--but he's one of the monsters. One who can steal a soul with a simple strain of music. When the chance arises to keep an eye on Kate, who's just been kicked out of her sixth boarding school and returned home, August jumps at it. But Kate discovers August's secret, and after a failed assassination attempt the pair must flee for their lives. In This Savage Song, Victoria Schwab creates a gritty, seething metropolis, one worthy of being compared to Gotham and to the four versions of London in her critically acclaimed fantasy for adults, A Darker Shade of Magic. Her heroes will face monsters intent on destroying them from every side--including the monsters within. The repackaged paperback includes a map of V-City!

This Savage Song

Faces had so many features, infinitely divisible, and yet they all added up to single, identifiable expressions like pride, disgust frustration, fatigue...

"Every weakness exposes flesh," he'd said, "and flesh invites a knife"

"People are users. It's a universal truth. Use them, or they'll use you."

It was a cruel trick of the universe, thought August, that he felt human only after doing something monstrous. Which made him wonder if that brief glimpse of humanity was really just an illusion, an echo of the life he'd taken. An impostor sensation.

Away. Whole. Sane. Happy. A dozen different selves with a dozen different lives, but she wasn't living any of those. She had to be here. Had to be strong.

but the beautiful thing about books was that anyone could open them. 

The only people who hid were the ones with something to hide.

August stood, staring, trying to understand what made men break like this. Not in a physical way—human bodies were brittle—but heart and soul, what made them jump, fall, even they knew there was no ground beneath.

"Death and violence, isn't that what all monsters want?"

This Savage Song quotes

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