Kat
Time-travel madness maybe romance? Sign me the hell up, I thought after reading the synopsis. To say this book disappointed me might be the understatement of the year and it's only February!
The romance is a real ouroboros. There's much to admire about this ancient symbol, but it's not what I want in a romance. Eleanor and Robin like each other because they like each other because it has been said that they like each other. This might have been acceptable except this is supposed to be the engine of the story, and I didn't particularly care.
Half formed plot lines that I was far more curious about that the Eleanor/Robin romance are sprinkled through the book, but unfortunately our lurching through the timeline means they're often lost (Aunt Clara's dealing with the difficulties on the restrictions that came with being female) or resolved in a timeline where the resolutions are kind of uninteresting (Catherine's elopement with David. I don't want to see that resolution in Vietnam era America where the worst thing that happens are hurt feelings and Lady Ann getting to say I told you so.)
The Reveal.
A number of reviewers said this part of the novel of confusing or overly complicated, but I think Krueger actually did a good job laying it all out clearly.This was my favorite part of the novel, and if I had actually any of the slightest attachment to any of the characters I probably would have gotten choked up reading about Eleanor pleading for her life and her loved ones. Unfortunately I don't, so I was mostly left saying "wow this really could have been something." Like the rest of the novel.
I did like Krueger's writing for the most part though. The sole exception being whenever Elizabeth would show up and for some reason she'd forget every bit of vocabulary and the page would be filled with endless permutations of ‘burble.' (Brits, is this one of those British/Queen's English words that is much more popular over there than in America? Anyway hate it. It's going on my least favorite word list along with moist and giblets.)
Setting: a fancy restaurant
At Rise: a Woman sits trying to catch the attention of a well dressed waiter without being too demanding or rude
WAITER
Yes, Madame, how can I help you?
WOMAN
I just—I think there's been a mistake. You see, I ordered Wicked Saints, and I received . . . this.
[gestures to the book with obvious distaste]
WAITER
As you can see, Madame, it says Wicked Saints right there on the cover.
WOMAN
I know. I know! It's just—it was described as “devastatingly Gothic?” And—just, there's no transgression against the natural order, let alone a price to pay for it. No subversion of the romantic paradigm? There's no Edenic state of bliss to return to! Where's the atonement? Maybe you could say Nadya has forbidden knowledge being able to talk to all the gods, but that's just a thing she can do. There's no price for any of this. Do you see what I'm saying? And if these are what passing for Byronic heroes, these days, well, I shudder to think of the state of poor Lord Byron's corpse.
WAITER
I'm sorry it did not meet madame's expectations.
WOMAN
It's hardly your fault that the copywriter apparently confused Gothic with Slavic. Although the wordbuilding is so slapdash that it seems quite the insult to say so. The Slavic countries have such a wonderful rich history and are so often ignored by the fantasy genre. It's such a shame that this is the representation they get. Shaking a few Eastern European names over a generic, underdeveloped fantasy land doesn't really season the pierogi—if you will excuse my turn of phrase.
WAITER
Of course, madame.
WOMAN
And now there's an underdeveloped romance, and the female lead loses all her agency as soon as the love interest shows up. And I just—it's too much. I can't do it.
WAITER
You have our deepest apologies. Allow me to remove this and to fetch a menu so that you may choose something more to your taste.
WOMAN
Oh. Thank you. That would be wonderful.
[b:The Guinevere Deception 43568394 The Guinevere Deception (Camelot Rising, #1) Kiersten White https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1551892183l/43568394.SY75.jpg 67787916] was an odd book for me. I'm sure if you watch my star rating, it'll flip back and forth between two and three several times before I actually settle on one. And then probably see it on my book list and change it a few more times. So, look, it's a solid 2.5. Rounding up or down is absolutely pointless. This book is heavy on mystery and low on plot. Guinevere isn't the real Guinevere, but a changeling witch sent by Merlin to protect King Arthur and Camelot. Is there a real Guinevere? How does she feel about this? What happened to her? What are the ethical implications of swapping one woman for another woman to pretending to be the first woman? I mean, that's more than a little troubling right? What is Guinevere supposed to protect Arthur from? I hope you weren't hoping for answers, reader. There are none to be had. Mostly Guinevere talks and runs into other famous Arthurian characters and has pretty boring conversations with them. It feels like White is taking you a meandering one note tour and hoping that occasionally running into an old friend here and there is enough to keep you interested. Oh, there's Sir Bors! Isn't he always a delight to see? etc. etc. It's not enough. Here I will admit that I kind of hated most of White's choices with the Arthur's mythos. Arthur is supposed to start the new age of man, which means getting rid of all the magic, but his right hand man is a sorcerer and his wife is secretly a witch. So a bit hypocritical. But mostly turning fairy tale Camelot into low fantasy world is kind of a bummer. Mordred gets made over into a hunky antivillian who has a brief fling with Guinevere, instead of Lancelot who gets a surprise gender reveal as female, but wait no, trans? nonbinary? IDK. They only show up for a hot minute anyway. Most importantly, where is my boy Gawain aka best knight?Still! I know that Arthurian canon is pretty much a choose your own adventure story, and while it was not personally to my taste, I was willing to at least go with it, or would have been had you know anything of interest happened. Guinevere makes no political maneuverings and spends so much time separated from her husband that the very premise of the story (changeling witch bodyguard) starts to look shaky. The last forty pages is pretty good, but it was way too little way too late.
We're dropped off immediately into a Prologue. Prologues are just so hard to take seriously even in the best circumstances, and this is certainly not the best circumstances. This is a flash-forward, the worst kind of prologue. If this is the interesting stuff, why are you making me start thousands of words—and in this case several years—earlier?
It was hard to get into. The writing much too much for my tastes. It keeps dropping big Emotional revelations on you, but you don't know what's really going on or these characters or why you should give a fork. So while these big Emotional nuances are being flung towards you like anvils, they land more like a gentle spritz of face spray with a partially blocked nozzle.
Still, I was ready to hum along and to give this book a chance. But it didn't take long for the book to again completely stall me in my tracks. I can't have actually read that line. It cannot actually say what I though it said. Maybe ADHD-brain got to me? So I backtracked and reread this gem several times to make sure neither eyes nor brain was fooling around.
Nope. It actually said that.
The girl who had promised to love him for a thousand days.
Now, dear reader, I could not stop my mental calculator from popping open and running some basic long division. A thousand days is slightly over two and a half years. Ah, two and a half years of devotion? How does one get so lucky?
Who can forget the famous balcony scene where Romeo and Juliet are at last together, and their words to each other form a sonnet where they swear their hearts' allegiance for the next two and a half years? Or that time Captain Wentworth mourned his loss of engagement to Anne Elliot for two and a half years and then got over it and then never thought of her again? Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas were so devoted to each other for those two and a half years.
The amount of it takes to have a toddler capable of potty training, about the length of time Anne Bolyen was Queen of England.
Two and a half years.
If it seems that I am harping unduly this, know that 1) it's because I am genuinely delighted by it and teasing out all possible implications of this could entertain me for days, and far more importantly 2) it's kind of the perfect microcosm of this book's problems: While some of it might seem fine even beautiful on the surface, more than ten seconds of thought about it, and you realize that it's nonsense.
The world building is shallow. The north is full of nobles and kings who have colonized the eastern countries, and then there's the south which has brown people and nothing to really do with the other two regions politically? In fact, the south seems to exist only for (deep sigh) the representation points.
(Also not sure how I feel about taking one of the largest and persistent problems faced mostly by poc and giving it to white people. I'm going with just feels kind of icky for right now.)
One of our leads, Aurelia is of color(?), but other than a brief lament that this means she doesn't conform to the court's beauty standards, it doesn't mean anything. She could have been white and nothing would have changed. Look, I don't want characters of color to be constantly faced with racism, prejudice, or microaggressions, but this feels hollow, like slapping tanner on white skin.
(Don't worry! Hathaway still manages to shoehorn some gross brown people tropes into the text though. Havish is sexually promiscuous! And it's hard not to read him as sexually predatory given the large age difference between the two of them. Queen Sinora was illiterate but had an innate cunning! Man, all them brownies do love sneaking around and being backstabby and underhanded! They are just so good at it!)
In the same vein, you learn one of Athan's brothers is gay, but this isn't given any nuance or thought. How are gay people treated in world? Is his sexuality a well known fact? Is it surprising that Athan knows this about his brother? At one point, Athan's other brother—the aggressively heterosexual one—asks if Athan prefers boys too. How am I supposed to take this? Is that a legitimate question? Is he being a dick? Is he consciously tapping into years old and systemically embedded prejudice to be a dick?
I don't know because Hathaway doesn't bother to fill in any of these details. Or for any other social issue. The East is stuck in an endless war, so why isn't it sending women? Do women have the vote? Do people of color? For that matter, do I even know if white men can vote?
¯_(ツ)_/¯ says the text.
I might be able to excuse this somewhat if it was broad in scope, but the world doesn't just feel small. It's downright claustrophobic. Athan dreams of running away to be free of the never ending war machine that his home has turned into. He dreams not of running away to lay on the beaches of Fantasy-Fiji or of being a sheep-herder in fantasy-Iceland but of hiding in the mountains that are about three inches away from his home on the map.
Of course, this could also be because Athan is the most unimaginative sort of dullard. He wouldn't even be the only one to grace these pages.
It's not his fault. No one in this book has the sort of personality that you could dive into without worrying about breaking your neck, and Athan was the one that held my attention for the longest. I was interested to see how he went from trying to escape to becoming a commander, but it turns out he has no real arc. As soon as his mother dies, he steps up to play ball.
As for our female lead, Aurelia is a spoiled princess, and we've all seen this before. Normally, I like spoiled princesses. Watching them develop into interesting nuanced characters is a good time, but Aurelia is the most boring and most static version of this trope that I have seen in ages. Eventually, she becomes an impressive sniper at least according to the prologue, but Hathaway planted absolutely no seeds for that in this book. Her eagle eye is solely devoted to noticing her best friend's breasts. (This happened so often that I began to wonder if it was foreshadowing for a bi reveal. It wasn't naturally, but it was something almost interesting about her for a while.)
With our two leads being fairly lackluster, the rest of the cast fares a little better. All the bad characters are two steps away from twirling their mustaches and cackling. For example, Aurelia's uncle is Mean and Bad because he hunts and trains his dogs to tear little fawns to shreds because, sure, that's definitely how hunting works. While General Dakar and his devotion to the revolution is of course abusive towards his sons and drives his wife to drink. The most interesting of the lot are Queen Sinora, Aurelia's mother, former ace sniper, eastern alley, southern expat, turned northern ruler. In a just world, this would be her story but we're stuck with her drip of a daughter instead. Alas. Cyar, Athan's best friend, is also a bright spot. His friendship really helps to bring out the best of Athan's character, and their interactions are some of the best sections of the book although I could not exactly divine the reason as to why he has ended up in the Eastern army and fighting a war that wasn't even his. (Cyar, if you're being held captive against your will, blink twice, okay?)
Plotwise, nothing happens. Our two leads don't meet until—what? Sixty percent of the way through, and they pretty much immediately fall for each other, and then some more nothing happens, and the book ends.
All in all, it felt like I read the overly long prologue to a more interesting novel.
Born Wicked is in many ways somewhat typical of the current Supernatural YA. There's a sort of love triangle. Family relationships are heavily emphasized. There's an autocratic government making the lives of the protagonist and her loved ones difficult. However, the smart setting is enough to make me press people to give this novel a chance before they write it off as just another color by numbers YA. However, it's not a book that I'd beg anyone to read or give a chance to.
The premise is simple. A theocratic government in New England persecutes witches, and Cate is the eldest of three who promised her dying mother to protect her sisters at all costs. However, as Cate's intention day (the day where she will be forced to declare her intent to marry or join the sisterhood) things begin to become more complicated especially when it seems that the Cahill sisters might be the subject of a prophecy.
And maybe that is the largest fault of Born Wicked. For the most part it is engaging, enjoyable read and maybe could have continued to be so if the book had been maybe eighty pages shorter. The same scenes seem to repeat themselves several time with the slightest variations. Cate fights with her sister Maura or Elena. Cate worries about the prophecy. Cate moons over boyfriend. Cate worries about future prospects. It wears very thin, and unfortunately my patience tapped out near the end and I skimmed the last forty pages, where clearly the climax was supposed to be emotionally heavy hitting but by that time I didn't have it in me to care much more.
The setting is well thought out and surprisingly refreshing in many ways. (People of color in a historical novel? The non-demonization of Arabic world? Differing sexualities touched upon? Oh book you do know how to pander to me sometimes!) Unfortunately, the bland plot and the frustrated tension of waiting for something anything to happen could make it all too much to bear.
There were also several plot threads that didn't seem to go anywhere. For example, original suitor and former best friend Paul seems to disappear about three-quarters of the way through the book and is never brought up again.
This could have been a great book, but it falls short of the high standard that I would have expected given the flashes of brilliance displayed in certain corners of the book. A tighter narrative, some better developed characters, and I would have happily given it five stars.
I was really looking forward to reading Strands of Bronze and Gold. I am a sucker for fairy tale retellings and historical fiction and Southern Gothics. How could it miss?
By a mile actually, and then some. Firstly, it was less Southern Gothic and more Plantation Romance. If you're going to set your novel in Antebellum American South there are approximately ten million ways to be racist. Nickerson found just about all them and polished it all off with an actual literal magical negro character. I can't roll my eyes hard enough.
The book doesn't even the literary merit of Heart of Darkness of good prose and decent storyline. The book is slow moving often to the point of dullness right until the character arc is completed lightning fast with no development.
terrible all around.
Okay, so basically I had to read September Girls because a fight broke out. “It's super sexist!” “It's super empowering!” “Great book!” “Worst book ever!” The arguments seemed to be so strikingly opposite that I began to wonder if maybe people were reading two completely different books. At least until I cracked open September Girls and read it for myself. Then it all made sense.
On one hand, Madison builds a unique and interesting mirror for patriarchal society with the Girls. The constraints placed on them, how they decide to deal with the constraints, their limitations, and yes even the way that the Girls view society as outsiders. However, there's really not enough critique in the text to bring it all home. Not to mention the really most problematic and annoying element the Girls, if they want to be free of the curse, still have to bone a virgin dude. Because female life fulfillment still hinges on some guy's cock.
There are a few sparkle bright moments in the book here and there. On the whole, however, September Girls is sort of dull. The absolutely most frustrating thing about the book is seeing the neverending spark of potential within its pages, but it's quickly extinguished as we make an abrupt one-eighty so we don't have to engage too deeply with the hefty subject matter.
So, full disclosure: Once Upon a Time, I read the original Throne of Glass on Fictionpress. All the cool (and even the not cool kids!) were doing it! I'd wait for updates and eagerly phone a friend who also read, and we would eagerly discuss the newest developments and debate the pros and cons of love interests. She was Team proto-Dorian, and I was Team proto-Chaol but figured she'd probably end up with Dorian.
Even if I had not known Queen of Glass, however, I think there is no way that I would have been surprised to learn that this was a fictionpress original. Mostly because it has pretty much all the greatest hits of Fictionpress Fantasy Cliche. Throne of Glass ft. Corset Hate* (I'd Much Rather Wear Pants), Evil Tyrant Who is Evil, Heroine with Unusual Eyes, I'm Not Like the Rest of These Airheaded Twits (The Casual Misogyny Song), and In Your Dreams (Destiny Is Bossing You Around).
Okay, here's the thing about Calaena. I like her-she's flawed in unusual and interesting ways. I like that she's vain because I'm tired of plain heroines who complain about being plain and beautiful heroines who are convinced they are plain and beautiful heroines who act like it's a curse. You go, girl. Make it work for you. She's fiercely proud. Now, these would be great if the book would just let them stand on their own instead of beating you over the head with them with oh she's stunning, oh she's so talented. Worse, it does this without usually not by showing but explicitly telling. Yawn.
So like I said I like Calaena, but I could have liked her a whole lot more. The major problem is that I find it hard to root for her and hold my breath in suspense because her flaws and faults have so little weight. Sure, they pop up all the time, but it's easily brushed away either by the narrative or by other characters. Go to the ball that you're not supposed–a few cross words and then all is forgiven. There's never a lack of surety to her or the narrative. It never seems like a struggle. Sure, in most narratives it's a fairly safe bet that the protag is going to succeed, but still watching them snatch victory out of the jaws of defeat is exhilarating! There is none of that as Calaena sails through test after test.
Even more annoying during possibly the only tense moment, the day is saved not by our heroine or cleverness from one of our heroes but rather by a rather deus ex machina apperance.
There's also a strange discrepancy between her history and some of personality traits. Like, okay, she's been trained to be an assassin since she was eight, but despite this, she's pretty street dumb. Yeah, you eat that candy that randomly showed up in your bed despite the fact that you know an ancient evil is lurking somewhere in the palace and killing your competitors. Despite there being an explicit discussion of there being no honor among assassins, trust pretty much every random person who offers you assistance.
There's also some minor continuity issues. For example, Calaena complains that Chaol never laughs and jokes with her like Dorian does even though there are literally a dozen scenes of them doing just that.
There's some sloppy editing. Maas has a weird penchant for adding comma, and there is an appalling amount of sentences that start with And.
Mostly, the thing I find most distressing is that Throne of Glass is distressing shallow compared to the Fictionpress Queen of Glass. Really! I don't know if Throne of Glass was dumbed down for the YA market, but it really lost a lot of the things that made it great, leaving you with a shallow, fluffy read that isn't even fun to read.
A tepid two and a half stars out of five
I picked up Trance with the hope of it being a fun read. That's what I wanted, and that's exactly what I got, so if that's what you want, your search has ended, and I definitely endorse Trance as a read. Is it perfect? No, but it does have some great points.
Naturally and not particularly surprising, the best part of the book is the plot. The book starts on a tense scene while a group of metahuman kids attempt to take on the Banes (the bad guys.) And then suddenly everyone loses their powers. Perfect, I love when books spell out their plots and make me want to see the resolution. Why did everyone lose their powers, and more curiously, why did they suddenly get them back? The plot is really brought to life by Meding's other great strength: worldbuilding. The post metawar world is not a nice place, but more importantly it really ups the complexity. The media is all over their reapperance. Reactions are complicated to put it mildly, which puts them in the awkward position of dealing with politics both from the government and their own internal conflicts.
Drawbacks? Have you read urban fantasy? Then a lot of it is going to look pretty familiar to you. Like pretty much all Urban Fantasy's Protagonists Teresa starts off as your average down on her luck waitress who struggles to pay her bills because UF protags always have dead end jobs, no money, and troubled pasts. However he life pulls a one-eighty, and she soon ends up manifesting a set of powers–not her old powers, but a new set which makes her one of the most powerful metas on the planet. Newly repowered the metas assemble at an old base while they find themselves being targeted by Spectre, the Big Bad Bane who started the meta wars. Able to mentally posess anyone, the new Ranger team has to confront and kill their loved ones and people guilty of nothing more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Spectre is a fantastic villain who is capable of driving the strong central conflict, and he clearly enjoys messing with the Rangers because there's nothing they can do about it. But, and this is my big issue, his plan is really, really stupid. Even though the why everything gets neatly laid out in the end, it still seems awkward and clunky.
So what keeps this novel from being really great? Brash, temperamental, Massive Trust Issues, but ferociously protecting that heart of gold as I've said she'll be familiar. Not a bad thing necessarily sometimes you need a difficult pigheaded heroine! But the rest of the cast falls flat. The Rangers are all Good with a capital G and not mention Nice. Despite the implied struggles after the power loss, it doesn't seem to have had any long lasting effects. They're all good, polite, people. Even the most morally ambiguous characters are chagrined in all the right places and confess casually to things they worked hard to keep hidden previously. They connections and relationships seem contrived and artificial. Teresa immediately rebonds with her childhood best friend that she hasn't seen in fifteen years like nothing happened although they're practically polar opposites. Wut?
Characters fall in and out of love, die, and disappear without leaving much of an emotional impact on the other characters or the reader. They don't seem to have really high emotinal stakes at all. The return of their powers is treated with general nonchalance and even at what was supposed to be one of the book's most emotional reveals reads more along the lines of a weather report. It doesn't help that the dialogue often seems contrived and unnatural, written so that the reader can get exposition or to set up a one liner. It smooths out as the book goes on probably helped by the fact that no one needs to info dump anymore. But do we really need a Hispanic character that randomly replaces words with Spanish? The stereotyping! It hurts!
There are a few things that don't quite match up in the book that probably should have been caught by an editor. It does feel like the first book in a series, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Once the series finds its feet and breaks away from the pack, it could be great.