Powerless

Editing this three weeks later. Knocking down 1 star since upon reflecting, this is not a great book. As Leonie said (way more concise than myself) “no worldbuilding, no lore, no atmosphere, nonsensical and superficial politics, bland cardboard characters, romance that had no basis other than to fit the ‘enemies-to-lovers/knives-to-throats' checkbox”


3 stars! Unique premise, but I feel like the author was writing with the goal of being the next booktok viral romantasy instead of an actual good story and quite literally lost the plot because of it.

Imagine if the throne of glass competition in the first book was a hunger games style contest. Now imagine the plot is a convenient way to string trope after trope (forced proximity, “who did this to you?”, golden vs dark brother, enemies to begrudging allies, “i'm not like other girls because I want to bring my dagger to the ball”, morally gray love interest, “i hate that I don't hate you”) together with dual POV. The magic system was unique but not developed enough to buy me into it, and the plot holes made the character's actions feel random and insincere.

That being said, I never found myself struggling to reach for or finish this book, and the tension between Payden and whatshisface was really well written. The high stakes just weren't there for me since I have read other fantasy with much better world building and developed character motives. There were some scene for scene moments ripped off from acomaf and moments I rolled my eyes but this got me out of my DEEP reading slump which I will forever be grateful for. Will maybe read the next one, but only if I get it free on Libby ya feel? Ok bye