Reviews with content warning for Death of parent - Wiedźmi król

Reviews tagging 'Death of parent'

Wiedźmi król by H.E. Edgmon

82 reviews

wardenred's review against another edition

adventurous funny medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

I am not the golden goose. I am more like an actual goose, hissing and honking and attacking small children who just want to give me bread.

Damn. This was so promising! That in media res opening really hooked me, and also, I listened to this one as an audiobook and the narrator did such a good job with the angry, self-deprecating POV character’s voice. A book with a trans MC, found family, angrily dealing with trauma, standing up to oppression, and deconstructing the fated mates trope sounded amazing. But alas, the further I got into it, the more I felt like the execution of the novel didn’t live up to its amazing potential.

Honestly, this felt very much like an early draft in need of editing. There are numerous sections that read like they were written only as means of figuring out what comes next. Plenty of characters have the exact same shrugging, lip-biting, fangs-gnashing mannerisms. The MC regularly pauses in the middle of dialogue and action to contemplate a bunch of stuff and go off tangent, to the point that I genuinely kept forgetting where the current scene was taking place or what was even happening in it by the time he stopped with the musings. The worldbuilding is full of holes, and the way the fae society functions is more just… a vague collection of ideas that need a lot of thinking through. There was really no need to explicitly spell out that the witches’ position in the fae society is a metaphor for trans/queer kids in the real world. The magic system is all over the place and doesn’t stick to its own rules. All in all, the book feels like someone excitedly telling themself or their closest friends a story, occasionally pausing to insert their own strong opinions in the style of a viral Tumblr post. Which is a perfectly valid state for a book to be in! But, uh, maybe some of this should be fixed before publication.

There *are* things here that I found consistently interesting and promising, but I kept thinking of ways to fix the execution more than I was thinking about the story. Like, we have this premise: Wyatt escaped to the human world years before the book starts, now he’s getting dragged back by his fae prince fated mate. Once there, he gets a proposal from the villain whose beliefs clearly go against Wyatt’s own: make everyone hate you so that the wedding never happens, which would weaken the prince’s position and strengthen the villain. Wyatt wants to go back to the human world and also wants to cause chaos, so he agrees, and some shenanigans do follow—except they feel more like a series of loosely connected vignettes than a plot. Yeah, he does some chaotic stuff. The results of it get promptly fixed with magic, and no one’s opinion on Wyatt or the impending wedding changes much. He doesn’t have any real plans to meet his goal, he just wonders around the plot and makes intentional bad decisions.

Then we’ve got Briar, his best friend from the human world whose parents kind of adopted Wyatt in the backstory. When Emyr appears to drag Wyatt back to Asalin, she allegedly follows because she wants to help Wyatt with his goal of NOT marrying Emyr. But once they’re there, she’s just running around excitedly learning about the new world and nods along whenever the locals talk about Wyatt’s future marriage like it’s set in stone. Does anyone here know how to have consistent agendas??? Though she’s still a way better friend to Wyatt than he is to her.

Speaking of Briar and her parents, I’ve got a lot of questions to them. It was very nice of Briar’s mom to pick up a lonely struggling teen in a library and bring him home (I keep wondering how the family sorted out the legalities around it all, but okay, maybe Wyatt legitimately doesn’t care and doesn’t know). But it sounds like the family just literally tossed this teen into a room with their own teenage daughter and left it up to her to put him together, help him figure himself out, have a short-lived romance with him, become his codependent best friend, try to, in her own words, “be everything he needs her to be,“ etc, etc. Oh, and then they just let the two of them wander off with some winged, horned stranger. I have questions for these adult people. Big questions. Are they even characters, or are they just plot devices existing to make Wyatt and Briar’s story possible?

And the trouble here is, it could be a very good book! Such a good book! There’s SO MUCH potential here if only it got polished. I really loved all the poking at the fated mates trope—some of those moments were the most subtly done, leaving the reader to draw their own conclusions, and I really liked how those were written. I liked Wyatt as a character, if not as a person; honestly, his unapologetic, unreserved anger at the trauma he’s faced was refreshing. I liked where his storylines with Emyr and Briar were going, although a lot more was fumbled by the execution here. I liked a lot of the rep. But honestly, if it wasn’t for the audiobook’s narrator being so thoroughly entertaining, I would have DNFed this halfway at best.

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bohemianhermit04's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny medium-paced

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

4.5

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tinysierra's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional tense fast-paced

Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I love Wyatt as a narrator. He is so funny.

Book 10 for the
#TransRightsReadathon2024

CW: Wyatt is a vomiter

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asahome's review against another edition

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3.5

Two people struggle with the balance of power their relationship has been built on. They must decide how they will allow the expectations of others to determine their course.

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killahb94's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny medium-paced

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

2.0

Strengths: It was cute in places. I liked the Tessa redemption arc. I liked the unique character voice of Wyatt. I loved how queer everything was. I loved how energies were explained. I thought that was unique and cute. I thought it was interesting that the witches were 1. From the fae and 2. The societal outcasts.

Could have been betters: the character motivations seldom made sense. Briar opening the door. Wyatt not wondering where abandoned witch babies go. The characters seem flat? There are no actual consequences for actions so everything feels very uh.... Shallow? Wyatt 1. Steals a dragon 2. Shatters a greenhouse 3. Is like let's kill all fae and insights a riot 4. Is proven to be a traitor 5. The DOOR IS OPEN 6. KILLS THEIR PARENTS 7. Kills another guy 8. Frees prisoners from the dungeon. The consequence is the guy who should be King is and you are free from a contract you always hated.

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simplyammee's review against another edition

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adventurous tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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abarnakwn_ourcolourfulpages's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful fast-paced

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

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demawenda's review

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adventurous emotional funny lighthearted tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Przez pół książki sądziłam, że ta recenzja nie będzie zbyt pochlebna... Książka zdecydowanie skierowana do młodszego niż ja czytelnika(albo to ja jestem za stara ducjem z moim lvl22). Postacie są lekkomyślne i niezbyt "myślące". Szybkie zmiany zdania, które powinny zachodzić stopniowo, dwie postacie się nienawidzą, a w następnym rozdziale mają w pełni kochającą relację, dla mnie to mało realistyczne. Sam świat stworzony bardzo ciekawie, mimo małych niedopowiedzień i dziwnych sformuowań (mówię tu o rogach, które mogą się poruszać i zmieniac barwę? Nie wiem czy to moja interpretacja opisu czy naprawdę takie rzeczy się dzieją). Na samym końcu spotykamy żółte słoneczko Polsatu, ostrzeżenie dla wszystkich czytających przed wyjściem drugiej części w naszym ojczystym języku. Podsumowując, książka nie była zła, naprawdę wciągnęłam mnie gdzieś za połową.

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choicepotatoes_yetagain's review against another edition

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funny tense medium-paced

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

2.25

2.25 - not for me
---
i wanted so badly to like this book, but it was not for me

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bookishchef's review against another edition

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adventurous funny medium-paced

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

3.25

I wanted to love this so much.
And part of me does. The characters were great, I loved the representation and I thought Wyatt was a really enjoyable narrator. The writing style was good too...

But the plot was all over the place. The pacing was inconsistent. And the story couldn't seem to focus on literally anything. To the extent that the main plot point of this book doesn't get a resolution by the end.

I thought Wyatt acted a bit old for his age too. A 17 year old with multiple years of sexual experience and sexual partners? Like... it isn't impossible and I guess some teenagers do mess around a lot but idk.

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