Lauren OK
This book centers on its quest, not its destination. Not an inherently bad thing, but if you're going to focus on traveling from one place to another, while mercilessly referencing lore and lands I am hearing about for the FIRST time, at least let me get close to your characters!
Kinch has a fun inner monologue. He's a thief and naturally irreverent and cheeky in the way he comments on the world around him. But he spent most of his time explaining things to me. At one point his family gets threatened, but we never learn about his family, or his previous emotional ties or investment in this world. It felt all very surface level.
I loved how well-realized Manreach was, but at times it felt like the author was trying to prove how good of a worldbuilder he was...like, yeah, I get that there are two different card decks for the nobility and the working class, but did you have to bring it up so many times?
Where Between Two Fires focused on two very different people learning to trust and provide aid for each other, this just felt like going through the motions of plot. We meet Galva in the very first chapter, and yet by the end of the book we don't know much more about her other than facts.
Overall I enjoyed it, but it could've been so much more than hitting points on a map.
This book centers on its quest, not its destination. Not an inherently bad thing, but if you're going to focus on traveling from one place to another, while mercilessly referencing lore and lands I am hearing about for the FIRST time, at least let me get close to your characters!
Kinch has a fun inner monologue. He's a thief and naturally irreverent and cheeky in the way he comments on the world around him. But he spent most of his time explaining things to me. At one point his family gets threatened, but we never learn about his family, or his previous emotional ties or investment in this world. It felt all very surface level.
I loved how well-realized Manreach was, but at times it felt like the author was trying to prove how good of a worldbuilder he was...like, yeah, I get that there are two different card decks for the nobility and the working class, but did you have to bring it up so many times?
Where Between Two Fires focused on two very different people learning to trust and provide aid for each other, this just felt like going through the motions of plot. We meet Galva in the very first chapter, and yet by the end of the book we don't know much more about her other than facts.
Overall I enjoyed it, but it could've been so much more than hitting points on a map.