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authorannafaundez's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
I still have no idea if I actually read this book when it came out. Maybe I just read a synopsis somewhere.
Anyway, once again, nothing much happens in Destined. Similar to the previous few books, Destined is slow paced, but it also takes place over a very short amount of time: five (5) days.
Most of this slowness is due to more of the same: relationship drama, multi-boyfriend drama, the villain having no clear reasons for wanting what they want (a superobjective, a why,) and cliché tropes without an original spin.
At this point, there's really only one character worth reading these books for, and it isn't the MC.
The ending of this book, where something finally happens, is obviously the best part. But the last few pages somehow manage to trivialize what does happen and turn it into melodrama instead of engaging drama. Great job?
Anyway, once again, nothing much happens in Destined. Similar to the previous few books, Destined is slow paced, but it also takes place over a very short amount of time: five (5) days.
Most of this slowness is due to more of the same: relationship drama, multi-boyfriend drama, the villain having no clear reasons for wanting what they want (a superobjective, a why,) and cliché tropes without an original spin.
At this point, there's really only one character worth reading these books for, and it isn't the MC.
The ending of this book, where something finally happens, is obviously the best part. But the last few pages somehow manage to trivialize what does happen and turn it into melodrama instead of engaging drama. Great job?
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood
Moderate: Body horror, Death of parent, Injury/Injury detail, and Violence
Minor: Bullying, Sexual content, and Toxic relationship
ludmireads's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
3.0
This actually wasn’t as bad as the previous books. I really enjoyed it.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death of parent, Murder, Violence, Blood, Death, and Grief
jonsnowsmanbun's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood
rachaelarsenault's review against another edition
slow-paced
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
0.25
This book had a clear central plot - Zoey's mom has been murdered, Aurox is not quite what Neferet claims he is, and these two things are undoubtedly connected. The goal is to prove that Neferet killed Zoey's mom to create Aurox. Sounds like a pretty solid, emotional plot, right?
It would've been. If the book actually dedicated real time to pursuing the resolution of this conflict.
Right out the gate, we have a problem. In Awakened, Sgiach gave Zoey a seer stone, which reveals the presence of old magick when she looks through it. Every time Zoey is around Aurox, the stone heats up, clearly indicating that looking through the stone will reveal what he actually is. But... Zoey never does this - not until the very end of the book. Is it because there's some sort of painful or dangerous consequence to using the stone? Is it because using it is complicated and she hasn't mastered it yet? Is it because outside forces are cloaking Aurox or otherwise making it difficult for Zoey to accurately see him through the stone? Nope! It's because Aurox makes Zoey feel stressed and uncomfortable, so she's scared to look through the stone.
That's it. That's the reason it takes Zoey 224 pages to try the easiest and most obvious solution to one of the mysteries she's grappling with.
And then there's the fact that no one does anything to try and make sense of Zoey's mom's death until chapter twenty-five, when Thanatos announces they'll be performing a reveal ritual. I mean, no one even discusses it or brainstorms or prays to Nyx for guidance. There's several moments where they talk about how, yeah, Neferet is probably the one who murdered Zoey's mom, and she probably used that sacrifice to create Aurox - but no one actually does anything.
But if no one is doing anything about the central conflict, how is this book 278 pages long? Easy: padding and filler.
There are a bunch of other conflicts littered throughout this book, and none of them accomplish anything. Stark isn't sleeping well and Zoey sees him get possessed by some sort of dark spirit through her seer stone. She does nothing about this and completely forgets about it pretty quickly. Readers know (and it's shown later on) that this is the work of Kalona invading Stark's spirit while he sleeps, using this connection to spy on his dreams and vicariously have sex with Zoey because - remember! - he's a serial rapist. But Kalona accomplishes nothing by doing this and just sorta stops at one point. Lenobia has a subplot about falling in love with a human cowboy that takes up way too much of the book (two entire chapters, plus sections of other chapters), has had no build-up in previous books, and doesn't matter to this one. Erin and Shaunee have a falling out because Shaunee apparently has a tumultuous relationship with her father, despite casually talking about her parents visiting in the past and being hyper-critical about people like Aphrodite for being messed up by their terrible parents. This subplot also has no impact on the book, even though it would be a perfect way to complicate the final ritual if Erin has decided she's too mad at Shaunee to be around her anymore. Oh, and yes, Erin is presented as 100% to blame for their friendship ending because she is suddenly a terrible person now. It's hard to care because the Twins have had almost no presence in the last several books.
There are a bunch of other scattered conflicts, too, but you get the gist. It's a bunch of drama that could amount to something and impact the reveal ritual at the end, but none of it ever does. And only some of it carries over into important conflicts in later books.
Another example of something being introduced and then becoming utterly pointless is Shaylin. For this, we get an entire chapter from Erik's perspective, of all things, in which he Marks Shaylin. But we can't just have it be that simple, of course. No, Shaylin is blind and ends up Marked red. Later on, Neferet says that her red Mark is a sign that she was broken before being Marked, and lip service is paid to the idea that this is cruel or bigotted, but... We're not really presented with a convincing alternative, and the rest of the narrative does make it seem like blindness made her broken. Case in point: Being Marked heals her. She just stops being blind. And she's thrilled! Because, despite being blind for about 2/3 of her life, Shaylin has no problem adjusting to being sighted again and immediately starts gushing about how beautiful everything is, and is scared that she'll be made blind again when Erik says he messed up. So not only does this equate to less than five minutes of disability rep (and bad disability rep at that, since the author clearly did no research), but it feeds into the idea that being disabled is an inherently miserable existence and anyone with a disability would love to be "cured".
But wait! There's more! Shaylin doesn't just get her sight back - no, no, she gets ~*special sight*~, because that's not the biggest blind-to-sighted cliche out there. Shaylin has True Sight! This means she can see auras. This contributes to the book in the form of her stating extremely obvious things about people and referring to them in colours. Also, Kramisha writes a prophetic poem mentioning True Sight which should indicate that Shaylin needs to join Zoey and friends for the reveal ritual, but she doesn't because Zoey somehow correctly deduces that the line about True Sight isn't actually about True Sight.
And if you liked that ableism, you'll love what else the author has in store! Namely, a whole lot of r-word jokes because - gasp horror - the characters have to ride a minibus to and from school. Zoey literally gets offended by the presence of a handicap rail at one point, I'm not even kidding. Oh, and the author vented her own personal gripes in this book via Aphrodite, as evidenced by a full-out ableist rant defending her use of the r-word that closely resembles this rant from PC Cast's old blog. I can't do this bit justice by summarizing it, so here it is:
Aphrodite sucked in a deep breath and let it out in a rant: "What about having a site for the c-word - as in cunt, which demeans half the world? Or, wait, no. Let's keep it the r-word site only make the r-word rape, which does more than just hurt upper middle class mommies' feelings."
The clear message here is that women and their hardships matter more than the hardships of the intellectually disabled, and that disabled people can't be upset about slurs in their own right. Instead, it's their mothers who are kicking up an unnecessary fuss and being overly-sensitive.
To say this is bigotted is an understatement. It's absolutely disgusting that something this vitriolic and harmful was published as recently as 2011, and horrifying that this book was wildly successful while espousing such toxic ideas.
The book still has the series' requisite gay stereotyping, but now that Jack is dead, Damien has suddenly absorbed his past traits despite never exhibiting them before. There's still a bunch of offensive representation of Cherokee people, including a lot of mis-translations of simple words and huge research failures. There's fat-shaming. There's an unnecessary attempted rape scene wherein Becca is vilified by Aurox, who assaulted her, and Dragon, who intervened. The book still shames and looks down on the poor and homeless.
Basically, it's all still really bad. And poorly written, too! Lots of typos, formatting inconsistencies, breaks from narrative voice for no real reason (using "fecund" is a particularly egregious example), continuity errors, etc. I haven't gotten anywhere near discussing every problem in this book - I mean, Kalona's redemption subplot involves him being a better dad. After being incredibly negligent and abusive for centuries, all he has to do is not hit Nisroc and apologize for disowning Rephaim, and then he's forgiven. And none of this even attempts to address the fact that the whole reason he's a villain has nothing to do with him being a bad father, and is instead about him being a serial rapist and murderer.
That's the kind of stuff that gets brushed over in this book, guys. I can't.
It would've been. If the book actually dedicated real time to pursuing the resolution of this conflict.
Right out the gate, we have a problem. In Awakened, Sgiach gave Zoey a seer stone, which reveals the presence of old magick when she looks through it. Every time Zoey is around Aurox, the stone heats up, clearly indicating that looking through the stone will reveal what he actually is. But... Zoey never does this - not until the very end of the book. Is it because there's some sort of painful or dangerous consequence to using the stone? Is it because using it is complicated and she hasn't mastered it yet? Is it because outside forces are cloaking Aurox or otherwise making it difficult for Zoey to accurately see him through the stone? Nope! It's because Aurox makes Zoey feel stressed and uncomfortable, so she's scared to look through the stone.
That's it. That's the reason it takes Zoey 224 pages to try the easiest and most obvious solution to one of the mysteries she's grappling with.
And then there's the fact that no one does anything to try and make sense of Zoey's mom's death until chapter twenty-five, when Thanatos announces they'll be performing a reveal ritual. I mean, no one even discusses it or brainstorms or prays to Nyx for guidance. There's several moments where they talk about how, yeah, Neferet is probably the one who murdered Zoey's mom, and she probably used that sacrifice to create Aurox - but no one actually does anything.
But if no one is doing anything about the central conflict, how is this book 278 pages long? Easy: padding and filler.
There are a bunch of other conflicts littered throughout this book, and none of them accomplish anything. Stark isn't sleeping well and Zoey sees him get possessed by some sort of dark spirit through her seer stone. She does nothing about this and completely forgets about it pretty quickly. Readers know (and it's shown later on) that this is the work of Kalona invading Stark's spirit while he sleeps, using this connection to spy on his dreams and vicariously have sex with Zoey because - remember! - he's a serial rapist. But Kalona accomplishes nothing by doing this and just sorta stops at one point. Lenobia has a subplot about falling in love with a human cowboy that takes up way too much of the book (two entire chapters, plus sections of other chapters), has had no build-up in previous books, and doesn't matter to this one. Erin and Shaunee have a falling out because Shaunee apparently has a tumultuous relationship with her father, despite casually talking about her parents visiting in the past and being hyper-critical about people like Aphrodite for being messed up by their terrible parents. This subplot also has no impact on the book, even though it would be a perfect way to complicate the final ritual if Erin has decided she's too mad at Shaunee to be around her anymore. Oh, and yes, Erin is presented as 100% to blame for their friendship ending because she is suddenly a terrible person now. It's hard to care because the Twins have had almost no presence in the last several books.
There are a bunch of other scattered conflicts, too, but you get the gist. It's a bunch of drama that could amount to something and impact the reveal ritual at the end, but none of it ever does. And only some of it carries over into important conflicts in later books.
Another example of something being introduced and then becoming utterly pointless is Shaylin. For this, we get an entire chapter from Erik's perspective, of all things, in which he Marks Shaylin. But we can't just have it be that simple, of course. No, Shaylin is blind and ends up Marked red. Later on, Neferet says that her red Mark is a sign that she was broken before being Marked, and lip service is paid to the idea that this is cruel or bigotted, but... We're not really presented with a convincing alternative, and the rest of the narrative does make it seem like blindness made her broken. Case in point: Being Marked heals her. She just stops being blind. And she's thrilled! Because, despite being blind for about 2/3 of her life, Shaylin has no problem adjusting to being sighted again and immediately starts gushing about how beautiful everything is, and is scared that she'll be made blind again when Erik says he messed up. So not only does this equate to less than five minutes of disability rep (and bad disability rep at that, since the author clearly did no research), but it feeds into the idea that being disabled is an inherently miserable existence and anyone with a disability would love to be "cured".
But wait! There's more! Shaylin doesn't just get her sight back - no, no, she gets ~*special sight*~, because that's not the biggest blind-to-sighted cliche out there. Shaylin has True Sight! This means she can see auras. This contributes to the book in the form of her stating extremely obvious things about people and referring to them in colours. Also, Kramisha writes a prophetic poem mentioning True Sight which should indicate that Shaylin needs to join Zoey and friends for the reveal ritual, but she doesn't because Zoey somehow correctly deduces that the line about True Sight isn't actually about True Sight.
And if you liked that ableism, you'll love what else the author has in store! Namely, a whole lot of r-word jokes because - gasp horror - the characters have to ride a minibus to and from school. Zoey literally gets offended by the presence of a handicap rail at one point, I'm not even kidding. Oh, and the author vented her own personal gripes in this book via Aphrodite, as evidenced by a full-out ableist rant defending her use of the r-word that closely resembles this rant from PC Cast's old blog. I can't do this bit justice by summarizing it, so here it is:
Aphrodite sucked in a deep breath and let it out in a rant: "What about having a site for the c-word - as in cunt, which demeans half the world? Or, wait, no. Let's keep it the r-word site only make the r-word rape, which does more than just hurt upper middle class mommies' feelings."
The clear message here is that women and their hardships matter more than the hardships of the intellectually disabled, and that disabled people can't be upset about slurs in their own right. Instead, it's their mothers who are kicking up an unnecessary fuss and being overly-sensitive.
To say this is bigotted is an understatement. It's absolutely disgusting that something this vitriolic and harmful was published as recently as 2011, and horrifying that this book was wildly successful while espousing such toxic ideas.
The book still has the series' requisite gay stereotyping, but now that Jack is dead, Damien has suddenly absorbed his past traits despite never exhibiting them before. There's still a bunch of offensive representation of Cherokee people, including a lot of mis-translations of simple words and huge research failures. There's fat-shaming. There's an unnecessary attempted rape scene wherein Becca is vilified by Aurox, who assaulted her, and Dragon, who intervened. The book still shames and looks down on the poor and homeless.
Basically, it's all still really bad. And poorly written, too! Lots of typos, formatting inconsistencies, breaks from narrative voice for no real reason (using "fecund" is a particularly egregious example), continuity errors, etc. I haven't gotten anywhere near discussing every problem in this book - I mean, Kalona's redemption subplot involves him being a better dad. After being incredibly negligent and abusive for centuries, all he has to do is not hit Nisroc and apologize for disowning Rephaim, and then he's forgiven. And none of this even attempts to address the fact that the whole reason he's a villain has nothing to do with him being a bad father, and is instead about him being a serial rapist and murderer.
That's the kind of stuff that gets brushed over in this book, guys. I can't.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism and Blood
Moderate: Homophobia and Sexual assault
Minor: Addiction, Body shaming, and Islamophobia
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