Reviews - One Dark Window | The StoryGraph

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45k reviews for:

One Dark Window

Rachel Gillig

4.28 AVERAGE

mbeattie32's review against another edition

2.5

adventurous dark medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I finished The Knight and the Moth about a week before starting this, and after that story this one left me underwhelmed. The tl;dr here is that if you love interesting and well-developped characters, or detailed worldbuilding, or twisty-turny plots, this book is not for you. This book isn't actively bad, exactly, it just isn't good.
Firstly, the writing: the author has a tendency to repeat certian words and phrases, which made the writing feel stale and a bit immature. I should have kept a tally of how many times she says "voice slick with oil" because good grief. Otherwise the writing wasn't bad. Not beautiful, not offensive, but perfectly adequate.
Characfers: the reasons why I didnt love this book have more to do with the fact that I never found myself growing to care about the characters. The main character, Elspeth, doesnt have much of a personality, in my opinion. I don't feel like we got a good idea of who she is, whether she is someone who is jealous, or brave, or loyal, or manipulative, or anything else--she seems like a fairly hollow fmc, designed maybe to be more of a vessel for the readers to insert themselves into the story. The Nightmare complicates this, I think, because at times when we WOULD be getting more of her intimate thoughts and feelings we are instead getting a dialogue between her and the nightmare, but still I feel as though opportunities were missed for Elspeth to tell us who she actually is. She's your typical normal girl, who just so happens to have a secret that makes her plot-relevant. She is Good. She thinks killing children is Bad. Etc.
I feel similarly about the main love interest. He is your classic tall, dark, and mysterious male lead, and like Elspeth, we don't get too many insights into what kind of person he really is. He is handsome, not evil like she thought he would be, and he doesnt smile much. That's pretty much it.
Both of them, and many of the other characters, are just kind of flat, "good people" who love their families the right amount, want to make the world better, and so they just... go out and do that. They're not complicated, they're not unique as characters, they're just there to move the plot along, playing their hero roles just like they're supposed to.

One exception to this would be Elm, the prince. He might be a more complicated character than all the others combined, except for the Nightmare, of course, and maybe Elspeth's father. Elm has warring desires, he is sometimes a good guy and sometimes kind of bad, he is loyal to his cousins but we find out there is also a part of him that wants to be king, and while he can be a dick, he is drawn to people who have been hurt like he has (Emory and Ione).

Exceptions aside, every character can be easily reduced to a caricature or cliché

cruel stepmother, a prince who is a brute, wicked king upholding terrible laws, ditzy stepsisters, girl who marries an asshole because she wants power, token woman who doesn’t wear dresses and fights as good as a man, sidekick(s) with a few lines who are immediately forgettable,

and those characters do not ever break free of that mold. I'm a bit at a loss, honestly, about how we spend so much time with these characters and yet we get to know them so little. Even the main romance just seems to happen because this is a romantasy book and it's supposed to happen. I personally did not find much chemistry between the two and didn't give much of a shit about their romance at all.
Plot/worldbuilding: very little worldbuiling actually takes place. You don't get to know Blunder at all (I'm still trying to figure out if they do actually all live in one town). The magic in this world is unique, although pretty cheesy (in my opinion), but seems to be applied a bit inconsistently.
I will say, the book ends pretty well, and even if the obstacles and twists along the way aren't all that surprising, they work for the story. A good story shouldn't be trying to surprise you above all else, in my opinion, and this book does a good job of telling the story it sets out to tell, not being too predictable, but not too surprising either. And yes, the ending made me bump up my rating by a quarter star, because even though I had already decided I wouldn't continue with this series it DID make me a bit curious to see where the story goes from here.
Overall, however, the lack of interesting characters and the lack of immersive world-building make this a book I would not recommend.