Reviews with content warning for Violence - Bound to the Shadow Prince

Reviews tagging 'Violence'

Bound to the Shadow Prince by Ruby Dixon

4 reviews

bsquiggle's review against another edition

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dark mysterious sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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hgriz511's review against another edition

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adventurous dark medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

This book was fun. I do feel like it dragged a bit longer than necessary. This book was over 500 pages and probably could have been edited down 100 pages or so. However, I liked the main relationship in this and the twist at the end was good. It was a bit predictable at times but in a way that made me want to get to the end to have all my questions answered. I was curious about a new Ruby Dixon book after Ice Planet Barbarians. This was certainly different but I’m glad I got my hands on it. She really is one of the spice queens. And it was my first Knotted Romance and I can’t say I’m mad about it lol.

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courtneytaddonio's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective slow-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? Yes

3.0

Thank you, NetGalley, for an eARC to review.

I am a huge fan of Ruby Dixon. Her IPB series, despite the repetitiveness, kept me hooked all the way to her current Clone series. While I’ve always felt her Aspect and Anchor books were a bit harder to get through, I still enjoyed reading them.

This book suffered and therefore so did I. It NEEDS to be edited. If half of the book was cut, it would definitely be a stronger story. We spend a lot of time with Candra being miserable for the first half of the book that isn’t entirely necessary. The entire

road trip

aspect of the book could be cut and the story wouldn’t suffer for it. Dare I say it, though I’ve never had this issue with past Ruby novels, the sex in the second half felt like it was a distraction from the plot, adding nothing and not even being particularly interesting.

What worked well? It’s rare that you find a character you dislike but still root for, but I found that in Candra. For the first half of the book, I wanted her to grow up and grow she did. It was really interesting the way Ruby crafted the blood curse and Candra was instantly recognizable to me as an insulin dependent diabetic. I felt this aspect of the novel was definitely handled with care. Ruby crafted a masterpiece of foreshadowing -

I kept waiting for the betrayal and all of the false starts really had me on edge.

My last gripe: Ruby discusses in the Author’s Note that she was inspired by the story of Troy for much of the war in the book. This is evident in the slavery aspect towards the end of the novel — especially in the story of Erynne’s baby boy being tossed from the city walls, making her our obvious Andromache. These parallels felt so ham-fisted in this story. As soon as Erynne begins explaining what happened to the women after the kingdom was conquered, anyone with familiarity with Troy would clock the parallels immediately. This didn’t work for ME. Others may read this as a poignant homage to those stories but I felt it was a cheap addition.

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brennaa's review

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adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious sad tense medium-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? Yes

4.0

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