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taliaissmart's review
DNF 20%. So much to keep track of (50 gods, 6 realms, layered stories), and I have to say it’s not holding my attention.
booklandish's review
4.0
What a delightful surprise! I did not know what to expect but I was sold with the Blurb:
"There's power in stories, this is a story of power."
Bullet review:
- Incredible world
- Stories-within-stories
- Murder mystery
- Political machinations
- Super creative
- Interesting MC
This is a detective/procedural mystery set in a completely fantastical world where the politics and mythology revolve around storytelling! It wasn't like anything I've read and I had a great time!
Another trilogy started hahaha, but it was so worth it.
"There's power in stories, this is a story of power."
Bullet review:
- Incredible world
- Stories-within-stories
- Murder mystery
- Political machinations
- Super creative
- Interesting MC
This is a detective/procedural mystery set in a completely fantastical world where the politics and mythology revolve around storytelling! It wasn't like anything I've read and I had a great time!
Another trilogy started hahaha, but it was so worth it.
suzanne28's review
3.0
3.5 Stars - It’s clear how important world-building was to the authors in “Widow’s Welcome” by how intricate the world they built was. It was definitely difficult to remember the facts about the world these characters lived in, at times.
As with many good fantasy books, the exposition is lengthy and detailed. In this book, though, it was kind of hard to get through and I almost gave up. Also, the main character is very unlikeable and didn’t really help further along the main plot well, which was a murder mystery. I found that the writing duo, D.K. Fields, was going for gritty and raw rather than plot driven or popular; I can appreciate this from an artistic, writerly standpoint, but as a reader it was hard to stay engaged.
What I loved were the two stories within the stories. Listening on audiobook, each of these stories were nearly 3 hours long each (in the 10.5 hour audiobook - WOWZA) but they were the parts where I was the most enraptured. The tagline was why I picked up this book (“There’s power in stories and this is a story of power”) and I got what I wanted just from those two mini stories within the novel.
As with many good fantasy books, the exposition is lengthy and detailed. In this book, though, it was kind of hard to get through and I almost gave up. Also, the main character is very unlikeable and didn’t really help further along the main plot well, which was a murder mystery. I found that the writing duo, D.K. Fields, was going for gritty and raw rather than plot driven or popular; I can appreciate this from an artistic, writerly standpoint, but as a reader it was hard to stay engaged.
What I loved were the two stories within the stories. Listening on audiobook, each of these stories were nearly 3 hours long each (in the 10.5 hour audiobook - WOWZA) but they were the parts where I was the most enraptured. The tagline was why I picked up this book (“There’s power in stories and this is a story of power”) and I got what I wanted just from those two mini stories within the novel.
obviouslyjudith's review against another edition
3.0
This just wasn’t it and I’m very sad about it // 2,75 stars
rhiancmoore's review
adventurous
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
hannargh's review
3.0
Quite honestly, I cannot tell whether this is a clever, impressive, artful book. Or one that is too far up itself to tell the reader the truth.
At around the 25-30% mark I was willing to give up. I've never DNF's a book and I was seriously considering it here. The story wasn't moving anywhere. Cora, as the apparent protagonist, was unlikeable, and was showing no development. She was missing leads and opportunities in the case, or allowing her subordinates to investigate for her, which meant that as a reader you were following her blind. The first couple of chapters contained all the interesting information and then the story went NOWHERE.
Not to mention, this was all taking place with reference to THE MOST COMPLICATED pantheon of gods ever imagined - they're listed at the front of the book. There are 50, FIFTY, of them and they all have specific traits, characteristics and preferences.
And in addition, this was during an election, where storytellers from five nations told a story to gain votes for the assembly. I mean, using stories to gain political power? That's a fascinating concept, and really appeals to the (one-time performing) storyteller in me. And I loved the idea of the collective gods as The Audience, who would listen to one's stories, before you would join them in death. Great imagination, really interesting.
But the explanations of these genuinely complicated concepts - both the gods and the election - were dry, difficult and meant that I was very nearly turned away from finishing.
And then came the stories: this book has two stories contained within the story (although if I was feeling clever, I might argue that this is, in fact, a wheel of stories, wrapped around each other, which is why the Casker and the Lowlander stories interrupt the main story and how they all become interconnected).
Now these two election stories are beautiful. They are fascinating, they are haunting, they are full of pain ... they are everything that the main story is lacking in its current form.
And that's what makes this review, and this rating, very difficult. Those two 'teller stories were everything I wanted to read - I wasn't at all mad that they took up a good 30% of the book in total, in fact, I was annoyed when I ended up back in the original narrative. But in order for them to have that kind of impact, the main story had to be, well, blegh.
The passage of time in this book is also very odd. I couldn't tell whether these events were happening over a few short days, but at other times there was reference to weeks passing. This also added to the feeling of disatisfaction at the end - by this point you had become invested in the election stories, and the conclusion wasn't clear whether there had been an outcome to the election, and the main character just wasn't interested, or whether it hadn't happened yet, and that future books would include the other election stories.
And finally - and this is my last gripe with the book - at 95% I knew the only way the story could wrap up, but I really didn't want it to finish that way. And there was no time left for it to finish without lots of unanswered questions. I was almost longing (a glutton for punishment) for the book to be twice as long so that it could contain the rest of the election stories and finish properly. Instead, it felt like someone had axed it halfway through and the author remembered towards the end that there would be two parts.
This author can write - the election stories prove that - so why do I feel relieved that I've made my way out of this book?
A tentative 3.5 stars, rounded down to 3.
*I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley and the publisher - all opinions are my own*
At around the 25-30% mark I was willing to give up. I've never DNF's a book and I was seriously considering it here. The story wasn't moving anywhere. Cora, as the apparent protagonist, was unlikeable, and was showing no development. She was missing leads and opportunities in the case, or allowing her subordinates to investigate for her, which meant that as a reader you were following her blind. The first couple of chapters contained all the interesting information and then the story went NOWHERE.
Not to mention, this was all taking place with reference to THE MOST COMPLICATED pantheon of gods ever imagined - they're listed at the front of the book. There are 50, FIFTY, of them and they all have specific traits, characteristics and preferences.
And in addition, this was during an election, where storytellers from five nations told a story to gain votes for the assembly. I mean, using stories to gain political power? That's a fascinating concept, and really appeals to the (one-time performing) storyteller in me. And I loved the idea of the collective gods as The Audience, who would listen to one's stories, before you would join them in death. Great imagination, really interesting.
But the explanations of these genuinely complicated concepts - both the gods and the election - were dry, difficult and meant that I was very nearly turned away from finishing.
And then came the stories: this book has two stories contained within the story (although if I was feeling clever, I might argue that this is, in fact, a wheel of stories, wrapped around each other, which is why the Casker and the Lowlander stories interrupt the main story and how they all become interconnected).
Now these two election stories are beautiful. They are fascinating, they are haunting, they are full of pain ... they are everything that the main story is lacking in its current form.
And that's what makes this review, and this rating, very difficult. Those two 'teller stories were everything I wanted to read - I wasn't at all mad that they took up a good 30% of the book in total, in fact, I was annoyed when I ended up back in the original narrative. But in order for them to have that kind of impact, the main story had to be, well, blegh.
The passage of time in this book is also very odd. I couldn't tell whether these events were happening over a few short days, but at other times there was reference to weeks passing. This also added to the feeling of disatisfaction at the end - by this point you had become invested in the election stories, and the conclusion wasn't clear whether there had been an outcome to the election, and the main character just wasn't interested, or whether it hadn't happened yet, and that future books would include the other election stories.
And finally - and this is my last gripe with the book - at 95% I knew the only way the story could wrap up, but I really didn't want it to finish that way. And there was no time left for it to finish without lots of unanswered questions. I was almost longing (a glutton for punishment) for the book to be twice as long so that it could contain the rest of the election stories and finish properly. Instead, it felt like someone had axed it halfway through and the author remembered towards the end that there would be two parts.
This author can write - the election stories prove that - so why do I feel relieved that I've made my way out of this book?
A tentative 3.5 stars, rounded down to 3.
*I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley and the publisher - all opinions are my own*
ceratopsians's review
Plot was a bit lacklustre and it wasn’t holding my attention.
sadie_slater's review
4.0
Widow's Welcome by D.K. Fields (in reality a partnership of two novelists, David Towsey and Katherine Stansfield) is a fantasy police procedural with really interesting worldbuilding. It's set in the city of Fenest, a grubby, seedy metropolis which is the hub of a Union comprising six very different realms whose share of power in the ruling assembly is determined by the quality of the stories they tell to the electorate every five years. Detective Cora Gorderheim is hard-bitten and cynical and not one to get involved in politics, but when a man's body is found in an alley with its mouth sewn shut just before the start of the latest election, politics seems determined to get her involved, as her quest to find the killer also raises broader questions about the state of the Union and Cora's own past.
I found the start of the novel very slow, and there seemed to be rather a lot of reiteration of the basic facts of the case. Then, about a third of the way through, it suddenly takes off with the first election story (included in full, a novella-length story inside the novel) and from that point on I really enjoyed it. This novel includes two of the six election stories; when the second finished with only about 10% of the book to go I was a little worried that it was going to turn out to be the first part of the kind of trilogy which is a single novel divided into three, but in fact this one wraps up the murder mystery while still leaving the wider questions open for the sequel (which is out in August, and which I've preordered).
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free eARC of this book for review.
I found the start of the novel very slow, and there seemed to be rather a lot of reiteration of the basic facts of the case. Then, about a third of the way through, it suddenly takes off with the first election story (included in full, a novella-length story inside the novel) and from that point on I really enjoyed it. This novel includes two of the six election stories; when the second finished with only about 10% of the book to go I was a little worried that it was going to turn out to be the first part of the kind of trilogy which is a single novel divided into three, but in fact this one wraps up the murder mystery while still leaving the wider questions open for the sequel (which is out in August, and which I've preordered).
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free eARC of this book for review.
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