Mehta

1.5 stars maybe? I loved the dragons and can easily see why so many people loved the story here—I mean, the hype was what drew me in. But there were too many things that either made me think “how the fuck does that made sense?”, or cringe, or roll my eyes, or laugh when the author didn't exactly intend for the reader to laugh...

If you love fantasy romance and the tropes that come with the genre, this is for you! That was what I was hoping for too; I was ready to shut off the critical parts of my brain and go along with the ride. But, that would be the case if I was invested in the romance, which I wasn't. The main character, Violet, was so cliche and generic and like every other stereotypical YA heroine in terms of personality that I could not get myself to give a shit about her. And because of that, any high stakes moment did not feel high stakes to me simply because I didn't care about her or any of the people important to her.

The love interest was the typical cardboard-cutout bad boy character with a dark past blah blah blah. I'm perfectly okay with a stereotypical love interest in a fantasy romance, but he was just too predictable; it felt like his personality and reactions catered to the direction of the plot rather than he himself being a distinguished enough character. I needed more gradual development to be convinced of this emotionally stunted guy becoming emotionally available all of a sudden because of Violet. Also, I personally can't do sappy lines that make no sense. When he claims he fell in love with Violet from the moment he saw her, what the fuck? Makes absolutely no sense if you've read the story. I don't want empty sweet words just for the sake of it, a love interest's words should have substance and meaning. I also could not see what he saw in Violet to warrant these reactions. If I'm reading a tropey fantasy romance I still want to believe in the romance and find it convincing. Not whatever the hell this was.

The writing was alright, but every so often, I could not help but cringe. I don't expect anything major from the writing; again, my expectation was a run of the mill writing style. But the writing was sometimes so dramatized that it felt comical to read, in conjunction with being cringey and stilted. I found it pretty unpleasant.

Now, what happens when you read a fantasy romance book where the romance isn't working for you? You focus on the fantasy elements instead, right? After all, I've got to be engaged with something to finish the story. But that was the problem. This is so clearly written with the intention of romance first, and fantasy second (despite what the marketing makes you believe) that the romance not working for me was a massive problem. Because the fantasy elements were way too illogical and laden with plot holes to even coming close to satisfying me. They want soldiers to fight some war, but then they let all these young adults die just to see who's the strongest? Why not give them other roles in this society? Everyone wants to bond a dragon, but many dragons let their riders fall off their back and don't save them? What the fuck about this is appealing? But of course, precious Violet would not be dealt with such a fate, because of plot armour. They want to kill the small dragon because it's too weak and they don't want a weak dragon to bond with them. BUT IT'S STILL A DRAGON? I refuse to believe these antagonistic side characters would be this dense. I wouldn't have been bothered by any of this because I wasn't reading this for the fantasy to make sense, but the romance was so meh and lacklustre that this is what my focus drifted towards sigh

TLDR, nothing was outright terrible, but the romance was subpar, the writing was cringey, the fantasy elements were convenient and inconsistent, the stakes felt too manufactured and contrived, so nothing was good enough to entice a positive reaction out of me.

I don't quite understand the hype. This book is meaningful and thought-provoking in some ways, but the convenient plot and all the coincidences followed by the contrived justification of said coincidences felt very unpolished to read. I enjoyed some of the discussions that were had, but overall nothing quite stood out to me as amazing. I thought I would be heartbroken after reading this based on what the general consensus seems to be, but while I did find it very sad, it just did not hit me in the emotions as much as I'd been told it would. This could be due to the fact that—despite being mostly nuanced—I did not care about our main character Amir a whole lot. Also, the frequent tidbits of information in the book regarding the turmoil and situation in Afghanistan felt a bit... off. I'm not quite sure what it is, maybe it's because this story seems to be highly catered towards people a part of the western audience who may be ignorant about all this.

I don't think this is a bad book, but for the amount of popularity it has, I just don't see what the big deal is. It was fine, but nothing that praise-worthy in my opinion.

2.5 stars. I thought The Eye of the World was a fairly good story, but unfortunately my enjoyment while reading this was not very high.

I was quite invested in the story during the beginning, but somewhere around the middle my interest started to falter. Some of the dialogue dragged on for too long and started to feel redundant. Amidst all the things this book does really well, some repetitive dialogue or scenes is not the biggest deal. However, for some reason I just felt really exhausted because of it.

Also, by the end of the book, I did not become as invested in our main characters as I hoped I would. My favourite character was definitely Moraine; I found her to be incredibly intriguing and mysterious and kept wanting to read more about her. But as for the other characters like Rand, Nynaeve, Perrin, Egwene, etc. while I definitely didn't mind reading about them, did I like them enough to commit to a 14 book series that [I'm assuming] centers around them? Probably not.

I think this book definitely has its merits and is not a bad book by any means, but it's just not for me at least at this point in time. Convincing myself to finish this series, no matter how much I want to, will lead to some form of a fantasy burnout. I won't say never; perhaps I'll slowly make my way through the Wheel of Time series one day, but I won't be picking up the second book any time soon.