Reviews with content warning for Violence - Broken Throne

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Broken Throne by Victoria Aveyard

7 reviews

prashiie's review

adventurous dark emotional funny inspiring mysterious sad tense 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

4.0

"We destroy. We rebuild. We destroy again. It is the constant of our kind. We are all a god's chosen, and we are all a god's cursed."

I liked how this book is bundled. On one hand we have several short stories and on the other hand Julian’s journal where he talks about the history of this world.
Queen Song is about Cal’s mother and focuses on how she meets Cal’s father and how she deals with Elara. I thought this story was particularly sad,

because we see more and more signs of Elara messing with her mind as the story proceeds. Tiberias VI even knows about this!

"Speaking of punishment—if Elara whispers to you again, you show her the same courtesy."
"She knows, as everyone else knows, that my father will call for Queenstrial soon. I don't doubt she's wriggled into every maiden's head, to learn her enemies and her prey."

And to think that Tiberias VI eventually ends up marrying Elara is very disturbing and it shows how devastating Elara’s powers really are.

There were of course more short stories! I was very happy to read the stories about Evangeline, Cal, Maven and Mare even though Mare was sometimes frustrating. Give Cal a break, jeez…
And Maven’s final conversion with Cal made me very emotional.

In short, I’m happy to have read the Red Queen series but I’m sad to let it go now.

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eleanor_forbes_m's review

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad tense 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

4.75

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kingspite618's review

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adventurous dark emotional medium-paced

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

3.75

not to be dramatic but the Farewell chapter has shaped me as a person in utterly fucked up ways and also rearranged my brain chemicals and perception of brotherhood forever thanks a lot! aside from that, this book ate and left no crumbs (which is no easy thing to do for a series' sequel)

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abigails_books's review against another edition

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adventurous lighthearted slow-paced

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

3.5

This series was so so so interesting to me when I first started it, and now that I'm done I cannot be anything but GLAD to be done. Wow, this series had such an interesting idea that was totally milked, diluted, and drawn out for the absolute most money-making opportunity. This book was a lot of things — at times I was happy to have read it, at times I felt like I was a chump for buying it.

BT was broken down into six novellas written within the Red Queen universe — the first two were re-published from Aveyard's earlier work "Cruel Crown," namely "Queen Song," the story of Coriane Jacos' downfall, and "Steel Scars," the story of Farley 'meeting' Shade.

The following four novellas were new material (thank the universe) — "World Behind," "Iron Heart," "Fire Light," and "Farewell."

Queen Song:
This was probably my favorite novella of the entire book, and that was exclusively because I chose NOT to buy Cruel Crown, so I didn't have to read it twice. I do not understand why she re-published the first two novellas from Cruel Crown. I do not understand — except that she didn't have enough material for a "big book" and her publishers wanted to milk her for all she was worth. That's all I got.

However, I did enjoy reading Queen Song! I enjoyed getting to see what the Jacos family was like and how the Silver kingdom ruled at the time. It was very familiar, and at times cute, but mostly it was just sad. I also didn't love that we don't actually get to read what physically is happening to her, we just get her perspective before she goes crazy. It was written in third person, so it definitely could have shown some of what Elara was doing, but alas. Queen Song should probably have been her lost novella.

Steel Scars:
In all honesty, I skimmed this novella. It was so so so so boring. I don't even know how to fully express it. So much of it was redacted and scene-setting for a story I didn't understand. It WOULD have been cool to see Farley and Shade fall in love. That's not what happens. We get 188 pages of Farley out-running her father on missions, trying to prove her worth, meeting Shade Barrow along the way, and speaking to him sarcastically until he shows her his ability, and then they continue to speak to each other in sarcasm — but look at each other like they suddenly HAVE FEELINGS for each other. And that's it. THAT IS IT FOLKS. Worth it? Nope. Worth publishing in the first place? No. Worth publishing TWICE? Definitely a NOPE.

World Behind:
The first two chapters I was absolutely bored stiff until in chapter 3 we finally get to the POINT and learn about Lyrissa, a Piedmont princess who has run away from home to escape her evil betrothed Orrion. This novella turned out to actually be cute and I thoroughly enjoyed being in the world and seeing it expand — traveling down a river we hadn't traveled down before, and the new characters introduced quickly turned familiar. I honestly would not have minded this to be longer or even an off-shoot book of this. It was cute and I didn't mind it. Just slow to get there, as per usual with Victoria.

Iron Heart:
Bless up we got some good content of Evangeline! It was nice to read about her and Elane settling into Montfort. I didn't necessarily get her issue with renouncing the throne in person so that made this novella a little drab for me, and I kind of was glad when it was over. But I did enjoy this little trip into Evangeline and Elane's minds and seeing that they're re-established in a safe place.

Fire Light:
Same here as Iron Heart just in terms of Mare and Cal. I was happy to see Mare's family re-settled in Montfort, that Cal was going about his business being part of the new government, and finally that Mare and Cal get their ending together. It was, again, drawn-out, but whatever at this point.

Farewell:
This novella basically showed us the last moments between Cal and Maven, reminding us that deep inside Maven still had little pieces of who he was, the boy that loved Cal. Which is great, but he's dead, so why are we reading this? No idea.

Finally, after the Maven/Cal of it all, we get historical notes telling us what happens next in the story. I could have skipped this entire book and read just those historical notes and I would have been happy. Honestly. I could have.

My biggest complaint is this:

Instead of writing an entire extra book of novellas — why didn't she just make war storm a little longer and add in these important novellas about Mare and Cal and Eve and Elane and Cal and Maven -- into the actual ending of the 'series finale' War Storm? Why? Did she just need a break? Not have an ending? I'll never know. But I'm glad I'm done.

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