Reviews with content warning for Death of parent - Realm Breaker

This book had super weird pacing. I think a lot of supercilious content could have been cut to streamline the story. For instance, what was the point of including the two chapters centered on the Elder princess Raya (listened to the audiobook and have no clue how her name is spelled). Her chapters did not add anything new to the story. We already knew Elders are physiologically different from humans and can be quite wealthy. We knew Erida was going to marry someone soon. We knew Spindles exist and pose a great threat to the Realm. Her character was not developed at all and was quite similar to Sorasa's that she felt like a cheap copycat.
Sorasa was my favorite character as she is quite witty and cunning. I am interested the see the direction her and Dom's relationship takes. (Their relationship reminded me a lot of Geralt and Yennifer's relationship, especially with Corayne seeming at times like Ciri.) Erida intrigues me. I am willing to give book 2 a try and hope it lives up to the great hero's adventure that epic fantasies often entail.

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hemmr3252's review against another edition

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adventurous inspiring lighthearted mysterious slow-paced

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

4.0

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thebakerbookworm's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious tense slow-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? It's complicated

4.0

This is a high fantasy book, the first in a series, with a lot of world building, the beginnings of a found family, and some intriguing villains and other morally gray characters.

I don't think I would call this book either character-driven or plot-driven. It's more world-building-driven. The plot moves slowly until the climax at the end, and the book takes a while to get into just because you're trying to understand the world. There's also a lot of characters and multiple POVs, so there's nothing consistent to ground you in the story at first. That being said, if you can push through, I think it's worth it. It definitely just feels like the opening chapter of a saga and will leave you wanting more—I'm excited for where the future books will take the story!

As for the characters, like I said there are a lot of them, and I think the development and backstory suffered a bit in favor of the world building. I'm hopeful that certain characters will be explored more later, but I wanted more from them in this book. I did like all the characters, but I still felt like I didn't know or care about some of them by the end (mainly Valtik, Sigil, and Charlie). I love a found family story, but I guess I just wanted certain aspects that came at the end of the book to come sooner. I did like how it's unclear from the beginning who all is "good" and who is "bad." There was one twist I felt coming, but I still really enjoyed it.

Anyways, I have a feeling this series could get better with each book. So I'm invested in reading the sequel, but I know I'm going to forget a lot that happened in this book before whenever the second book comes out.

Also, Lord of the Rings inspired this one, and it's definitely reaching for that level of epic-ness!

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