--This could have been more intricately plotted. --The characters could have been more developed. --Some of the violence, be3.5 stars
There's no denying:
--This could have been more intricately plotted. --The characters could have been more developed. --Some of the violence, because there are repeated beatings, could have been written with more emotional and physical impact --There is a half-hearted triangle. (sorta? Maybe more of a red herring.) --After 400+ pages, I'm still not entirely sure how all the magic works.
And yet...I enjoyed it! It doesn't hurt that the book starts off with a doozy of an act, one that clearly shows you the girl you are dealing with. (view spoiler)[Theodosia kills her own father as an act of mercy. (view spoiler)[I KNOW. (hide spoiler)](hide spoiler)] The measured way Theodosia makes decisions and feels about her relationships makes me like her a lot, particularly in how she deals with her parents and her old Astrean friends, and maybe above all, in the tenuous bonds she's formed with the Kalovaxians who enslaved her people. The country is at war, and Theodosia is at war with herself over how she feels about her friend Cress. But she is clear-eyed about Cress loving her in return as she would a favored pet, and about her romance with Soren being untrustworthy, because he doesn't truly know her. I also like that the book is honest about how a person in Theodosia's position would use whatever means she has, including her feminine wiles, to gain advantage and to deceive, without making her lose integrity or the reader's trust.
I found this to be compulsively readable and I was eager to get back the audio version every time I took a break. Saskia Maarleveld's narration also sounds very much like Eva Green as Vesper Lynde in parts, which is incredibly seductive to listen to. She gives each character subtle inflections and shading, and her performance was highly enjoyable to me.
If you swooned over The Winner's Curse as a whole or responded with excitement to the action elements of The Valiant (or maybe even the action parts of An Ember in the Ashes), this is definitely worth a read.
An audio review copy was provided by the publisher.
Screw it, I'm rounding up because I enjoyed it....more
Intriguing premise, with a plot that is fine at first, but eventually becomes unbelievable, then ludicrous. A slight but entertaining book ru2.5 stars
Intriguing premise, with a plot that is fine at first, but eventually becomes unbelievable, then ludicrous. A slight but entertaining book ruined by heroine's distraction by a blue-eyed charmer (view spoiler)[AFTER she knows he's a maniac (hide spoiler)], a superfluous continuation post-climax, why-haven't-you-caught-up-to-the-clues-yet frustration, hard-to-swallow mindsets, and occasional poseur shock style (view spoiler)[dude. you didn't MURDER him, and repeating it incessantly means any sympathy for your guilt over your involvement is negated (hide spoiler)].
It's to the credit of the perfect narration by Katharine McEwan that the experience was as compelling as it was. I barely noticed how slight the characters were or how hole-ridden the plot was until halfway through the book.
An audio review copy was provided by the publisher....more
Wendy Darling
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Books:
read-2019
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