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bishopbox's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
If you like fantasy, royal drama, found family, and talking horses, this is a great read!
Graphic: Classism, Medical content, Bullying, Violence, Domestic abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Emotional abuse, Animal death, Death, and Physical abuse
Moderate: Rape, Blood, and Confinement
jennajlh's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Graphic: Animal death, Child abuse, Classism, Emotional abuse, Gore, Kidnapping, Medical content, Animal cruelty, Death, Domestic abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Physical abuse, Violence, and Sexual harassment
Moderate: Blood, Kidnapping, Sexual violence, Police brutality, Rape, Trafficking, Bullying, Misogyny, Sexual content, Terminal illness, Excrement, Gaslighting, and Grief
Minor: Death of parent
mattyb's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Graphic: Death, Violence, Emotional abuse, and Physical abuse
Moderate: Animal death, Sexual assault, Gaslighting, Injury/Injury detail, and Bullying
Minor: Alcohol, Grief, Slavery, and Trafficking
fromjuliereads's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
The only reason I couldn't give this 5 stars is it dragged just a bit in the middle - I think some things could maybe have been taken out - and there could have been just a little more development for Kestrin and Thorn. But overall, a really good read!!
Moderate: Bullying, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Grief, Torture, Violence, Death, Fire/Fire injury, Injury/Injury detail, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Sexism, and Stalking
For stalking - a character continually comes after another character. It's a form of it but maybe not in the common use of the word...3mmers's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
Let me explain. While the paralysis and inertia caused by severe anxiety and depression are valid and sympathetic problems in real life, problems that I have spent a lot of my real life experiencing, it is much harder to make them compelling in fiction because they are inherently narratively frustrating. It would be unreasonable to expect a satisfying ending in real life, but it is fair to expect it from a story (hence the absolute plague of slightly ahistoric music biopics). Also, while fictional representation of the suffering caused by depression and anxiety can be relatable and comforting to some readers, it will not be for all of them. I hate the person I am when I’m at my most anxious. Genuinely. And I hate seeing my least favourite self reflected in others, fictional or otherwise. This might sound mean, because it is (like I said, I feel bad), but my continual frustration with the protagonist was the defining aspect of my reading experience. It was inescapable and it 100% ruined the book.
Sorry Thorn, no one wishes I liked you more than I do.
Alyrra is the unhappy princess of a small nation but her political engagement to prince Kestrin promises to take her away from the prison of her abusive brother and apathetic mother. Kestrin needs a bride he can trust after his ancestors all died mysteriously due to a curse inflicted by a powerful and vengeful fey known as the Lady. Alyrra departs for her new life but in a final twist of the knife she is accompanied by Valka, her childhood enemy. Valka immediately betrays her to the Lady, who switches their bodies. Now Valka is a conniving and treacherous princess and Alyrra is an unfavoured lady-in-waiting. In order to get her out of the way, Valka demotes Alyrra to goose girl. It would be a humiliating fall for anyone else, but Alyrra embraces the safety and simplicity of a life free from the high stakes politics of court. She takes the name Thorn and eventually befriends the other servants and stablehands. Alyrra may feel safer out of the spotlight, but Kestrin is in more danger than ever now that his fiance has been replaced with an agent of the Lady. And while Alyrra is free from the court, the stables present their own set of dangers that the nobles never see.
Wills she be able to overcome her paralysing self-esteem issues and accept that she is capable of making positive change in this world before it eats her alive?
Thorn is composed of two arcs. First, the external conflict of Alyrra vs the Lady. Alyrra has to keep the Lady from killing her fiance and his family and she’d also quite like her original body back. Second, the internal conflict of Alyrra’s emotional growth. After a lifetime of abuse from her mother and brother, her self-esteem is at rock bottom. She’s certain that she couldn’t do anything to help and that getting involved in the situation would only make things worse. If she’s going to save Kestrin and get her body back, she’ll need to come to terms with the fact that she can. The two are parallels. Alyrra’s emotional strength is essential to her political and physical well-being. Interlinking two arcs like this is generally a very good idea since it helps crate satisfying story payoff, however, in this case neither arc works as intended.
Thorn’s external plot arc didn’t actually trouble me that much while reading. It results in an unsatisfying story, but it is really only bad upon reflection. I heard this sort of thing referred to online as a fridge fallacy, in other words, a problem you only notice after standing up and staring blankly at the fridge for a several minutes. The external conflict feels weak because the Lady isn’t actually Alyrra’s antagonist. She’s Kestrin’s. The Lady doesn’t have any quarrel with Alyrra and acts against her only because she’d be helping Kestrin. During the period when Alyrra recuses herself from politics and avoids the prince, the Lady leaves her be. Alyrra also has no reason to side with the prince. She’s never met him when the story begins and though the engagement saves her from her abusive family, Kestrin offers it out of political expediency not kindness. The story gives us no good reason for Alyrra to care so much about this plot. Politically it would help her, but the story establishes over and over that she isn’t wily and hates politics. Being so committed makes her seem naive, and unhealthily self-sacrificing, which is a problem because this conflict is meant to show her overcoming that flaw. Alyrra has her own antagonists: her abusive family members, that’s who she needs to overcome to show her growth. Overcoming the Lady indicates less emotional strength than it does an unhealthy dedication to someone else’s problems.
The internal plot failed for me for much more subjective reasons. Overcoming paralysingly low self-esteem and anxiety is a sympathetic and tough struggle — in real life. It does not work in fiction. There is a reason protagonists tend to be highly motivated to take action and that is because it is boring to read about a character doing nothing. A passive protagonist isn’t always a deal breaker. Middlegame by Seanan McGuire uses time skips to jump over the long periods where the characters don’t work towards their goal and include only the good parts. In Thorn’s case however, the protagonist’s reluctance to act also causes problems with likeability. In other words, the reason that Alyrra isn’t doing anything doesn’t change how frustrating it is, and her constant mental anguish over whether she should or could do anything did not so much avert the boredom as add insufferable self-recrimination to the experience. Here is the thing about relatable issues: it is not always fun to be confronted with your own problems. While some may be comforted by the representation, there will also be those who hate having to witness the worst and most frustrating part of themselves. I do not like the person I become when I am paralysed by anxiety. I don’t like it in the moment and I don’t like looking back at it. Thinking the things I do, or rather don’t do thanks to depression inertia, is viscerally upsetting to me. The traits I hate most in other people are the ones I see in myself. And yeah, I hated Alyrra. I hated her more and more as the book when on and she kept doing nothing. I wanted to grab her by the shoulders, shake her, and shout ‘is nothing more important than this image you have of yourself? Just get over yourself!!’ When I’m in a deep anxiety funk I can feel a part of my brain trying to grab the rest of it and say the same thing. It never works, but it absolutely fucking sucks to be confronted with a mirror of yourself who doesn’t want to do better and who won’t pursue anything to improve. To be clear, that’s a preference to explain my disappointment. If you hold the opposite opinion and like the book for the same reason, that’s fine. This isn’t why I though the book was bad, just why I didn’t like it.
As for why it’s bad, at a certain point the justification behind the fear and inaction stops being important. For me this came close to the middle of the book. Alyrra has an animal companion, a magical talking Horse named Falada, who encourages and supports her as the only character who knows her identity has been switched.
These problems with the plot structure had already pissed me off so much that my opinion of the book was probably unrecoverable, but the latter half didn’t even really try to bring it back around. Alyrra doesn’t change in any way until maybe two thirds of the way through, which is way too much page space spent languishing in depression funk. Interpreted charitably this could be an attempt to represent the necessity of the rest to the healing process, but if that is the case it fails to come across because Alyrra’s inner narration is just as cruel towards herself as it always has been. The book is stagnant, and that makes it boring. Worse, when Alyrra does eventually begin to take action, it does not follow logically from what her arc sets up.
What else is there to say? I was really hoping the book would bringing it back around but it just never recovers
Moderate: Animal death, Sexual harassment, Murder, and Sexual violence
Minor: Injury/Injury detail
mynotsolittlelibrary's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
Graphic: Animal death, Trafficking, Sexual violence, Rape, Physical abuse, Murder, Misogyny, Kidnapping, Injury/Injury detail, Grief, Emotional abuse, Domestic abuse, Death, Classism, Blood, and Animal cruelty
Moderate: Body shaming, Abandonment, and Violence
jemofabook's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Thorn is a retelling of the Brothers' Grimm Goose Girl tale. I have read Goose Girl and several Goose Girl retellings/novels, but not since I was a child, and I don't remember much about the tale. From what I gathered from talking with my sister and looking up the original tale, this is a pretty close retelling in some aspects, but it also really makes the story it's own and introduces uncertainty. However, this book has AAAALLLLL the trigger warnings, and I was shocked at how dark it was, so I definitely suggest that you look into that before checking it out. It definitely leans toward the older end of YA, both in content and themes.
Alyrra is a princess in a small, unimportant land, where she just wishes to be forgotten. Her mother sees her as rather useless as far as politics go, and her brother is cruel and abusive to her. The king of Menaiya comes to secure a marriage between Alyrra and his son, Kestrin. However, on the journey to her new home, a sorceress switches Alyrra with her lady companion, Valka in exchange for a betrayal of the prince. Alyrra settles into her new life as Thorn, the Goose Girl, and begins to build a home for herself.
Ultimately this is not really a romance, but it is a story about a kind princess finding her place in the world, recognizing the injustice that permeates it, and doing her very best to change it when she can. Alyrra/Thorn is a very quiet heroine. She doesn't have any wish to return to the intrigue of the palace, but Valka won't forget her and how she could upset her current standing in the court. However, she is kind, and she has a good heart, and I appreciated seeing how that was able to guide her towards making an impact on the people around her and the world in general, even if it felt fairly small at the time.
Menaiya is a place where people go missing, especially children, and young women. There are things like human trafficking, animal death, assault, and other horrors that Alyrra witnesses and experiences in her time as the Goose Girl. Alyrra/Thorn faces a lot of difficult choices. In addition to the darkness, there is also magic, Falada, a mythical horse that is able to communicate with humans, mages, and fae.
I'd say that until the switch happens, I wasn't super interested in the book and almost DNFd it. Then once she was the Goose Girl, I enjoyed it a lot more. Towards the end when it got into some of the more philosophical questions and discussions came up like true justice versus performative justice, and the injustices that the underprivileged in society face when they are seeking justice, defense, and safety, I was definitely intrigued. Overall, though, the relationships were not super well-fleshed out, and while I enjoyed the side characters, I wasn't invested in Alyrra's relationships with anyone, really.
All that being said, I liked Alyrra/Thorn a lot as the MC. I enjoyed a lot of the side characters, even though I wasn't invested in them. I am especially interested in Red Hawk and his storyline/role. I enjoyed this story and am interested to see what else happens in this story. I will certainly continue reading the series.
Moderate: Domestic abuse, Trafficking, Injury/Injury detail, Sexual assault, Child abuse, Physical abuse, Violence, and Animal death
Minor: Death of parent
saurahsaurus's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.25
Graphic: Physical abuse, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, and Grief
Moderate: Alcoholism, Misogyny, Murder, Rape, Sexual violence, Classism, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Sexual assault, Toxic relationship, Animal death, Bullying, Kidnapping, and Violence
Minor: Death of parent, Slavery, Confinement, Torture, and Trafficking
cmbohn's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
Graphic: Physical abuse and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Murder, Rape, Domestic abuse, Violence, and Animal death
columnclub's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.25
Graphic: Sexual harassment, Child abuse, Animal death, Blood, Bullying, Death, Physical abuse, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Rape, Sexual violence, and Murder
Minor: Death of parent, Medical content, and Animal cruelty