Stolen Songbird was a wonderful story. The premise was very fairytale-like-- A curse that keeps trolls bound to a city buried beneath a mountain, and a prophecy that a union between a troll prince and a human woman would break the curse. 
 The world the author creates below the mountain is dark and beautiful all at once. Gardens made entirely of glass, lit up by magic. Delicate lacy patterns adorning hands in place of wedding rings. Magical lights that float around each troll, illuminating the city. But there are also also power struggles, tense alliances, and dark secrets, not all of which will come to light in the first book. 
 The author does a great job of blurring the lines between good and evil. Not all of the trolls are evil, and not all of the humans are good. Even the nature of the curse itself is in question-- is it really a curse, or is it better for the trolls to remain locked in their underground city? 
 The characters are great, as well. Cecile, our heroine, is only okay. She's not unlikable, but she's pretty average as far as YA heroines go. Tristan is wonderful. He starts out humorously rude and sarcastic, but ends up being kind, sincere, and with a strong sense of justice. The secondary characters are well-written too-- Marc is instantly likable despite his physical defects, the twins offer some welcome comedy relief, and Anais rounds out the group with her jealous-and-bitchy-but-comes-through-in-a-pinch nature. 
 There were only a couple of things I didn't like about the book, and they were pretty minor. First off was that, while I appreciated that there was no insta-love, the pace of Tristan and Cecile's relationship was a little awkward. They spent 2/3 of the book being antagonistic towards each other, and then all of a sudden they want to jump each other. It's not too unforgivable, since throughout the book the reader can tell that the way Tristan acts and the way he actually feels aren't necessarily the same, but the transition seemed a little abrupt regardless. Nevertheless, it's not a deal-breaker. 
 Another tiny annoyance was the name of the city. Trollus? Really? By that note I'm half surprised the world above wasn't called Humantopia. Okay, okay. I imagine it's supposed to be pronounced with the O like in "trolley" rather than the o in "bowl." Spoken aloud, that name sounds okay. But pronounced like it looks, "troll us," just doesn't work for me. 
 One last thing is the way the chapters are divided. This story is told both from Cecile's point of view and Tristan's. Except only a handful of chapters are told from Tristan's point of view, and those that are are very short. I know it's to fill the reader in on information that Cecile wouldn't know, but it still seems that they should have either been divided a little more evenly, or told entirely from Cecile's point of view. It doesn't really detract from the reading experience, but it is a little odd. 
 Overall, great book. It's missing that something that makes a book an amazing 5-star book, but it's still very good-- at the high end of 4 stars. I'm afraid the ending of this book set the trilogy up to be just like every other YA romance series, in that I don't expect to see a lot of Tristan until later on. I swear, every single series does this. But that doesn't make me any less anxious to read the next installment. And who knows, I could well be wrong.