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3.83 AVERAGE
3.83 AVERAGE
I realize I'm in the minority on this one, and I'm pretty sad about it because I was very excited to read this.
I feel this could have been better had the side characters been better. Meda is a great character. She's sarcastic and an awesome narrator. Following her thoughts was the highlight of the book. The plot, the school, the organizations, the names, pretty much everything else, irked me. It's a book where Meda is constantly on the go, tons of action, but I wanted more descriptions of the places she was in, more depth in the characters...I just felt this was lacking more than what I could take from it. I may consider reading the sequel, just because I loved Meda, and am hoping Armand makes a reappearance.
I feel this could have been better had the side characters been better. Meda is a great character. She's sarcastic and an awesome narrator. Following her thoughts was the highlight of the book. The plot, the school, the organizations, the names, pretty much everything else, irked me. It's a book where Meda is constantly on the go, tons of action, but I wanted more descriptions of the places she was in, more depth in the characters...I just felt this was lacking more than what I could take from it. I may consider reading the sequel, just because I loved Meda, and am hoping Armand makes a reappearance.
It took me a while to get to the point where I couldn't put this book down. But this was such a good original story. I though the characters were brilliant and Meda was a refreshing main character!
One of the things I loved most about this book was that is didn't revolve around a love story, there was a love story with the side characters which was nice. But unlike other novels where there is romance squeezed into ridiculous circumstances this was really refreshing. Meda isn't at the time in her life where she's looking for love, instead she's looking for herself.
I also really enjoyed he sarcasm, the dialogue was brilliant! I can't wait for the next installment which I believe is called 'crushed' and is out August this year!
One of the things I loved most about this book was that is didn't revolve around a love story, there was a love story with the side characters which was nice. But unlike other novels where there is romance squeezed into ridiculous circumstances this was really refreshing. Meda isn't at the time in her life where she's looking for love, instead she's looking for herself.
I also really enjoyed he sarcasm, the dialogue was brilliant! I can't wait for the next installment which I believe is called 'crushed' and is out August this year!
Actual rating: 4.5
I found in Cracked what I was looking for in Throne of Glass: a badass female main character. Meda kicks ass. Thank you, Eliza Crewe! MASSIVE THANK YOU!
This was an addictive page turner for me. Full packed with action; blood and guts everywhere! Ok, not everywhere, but just when needed. Have I said Meda kicks ass already? Yeah? CUZ SHE DOES.
I've been waiting for a character like her the whole year! I did have an issue the first half of the book: besides Meda, the other characters weren't solid. I mean, yeah we had the popular guy, the crabby-cripple girl, and the annoying kiddo who always followed them around, but there was no depth in them. Their personalities just superficially described. That somehow got fixed in the second half though. Still not the depth I've appreciated in other writers, but good enough to not bother me anymore.
Can't wait to read the second book!
I found in Cracked what I was looking for in Throne of Glass: a badass female main character. Meda kicks ass. Thank you, Eliza Crewe! MASSIVE THANK YOU!
This was an addictive page turner for me. Full packed with action; blood and guts everywhere! Ok, not everywhere, but just when needed. Have I said Meda kicks ass already? Yeah? CUZ SHE DOES.
I've been waiting for a character like her the whole year! I did have an issue the first half of the book: besides Meda, the other characters weren't solid. I mean, yeah we had the popular guy, the crabby-cripple girl, and the annoying kiddo who always followed them around, but there was no depth in them. Their personalities just superficially described. That somehow got fixed in the second half though. Still not the depth I've appreciated in other writers, but good enough to not bother me anymore.
Can't wait to read the second book!
This is hovering between a three and a four star rating. I really liked the lead (Meda's) voice and her interactions with Jo and there were some great/tense action sequences.
I did not finish this book.
Reading this book made my head hurt! It literally caused physical pain. Two chapters in and I started wondering whether I had masochistic tendencies after all. Why else keep reading?
This is a T.E.R.R.I.B.L.E. book!
The dialog is absurd, the prose is atrocious - a ten year old could have done a better job - the syntax is confusing, the metaphors are dreadful and someone should take thesaurus away from Mrs. Crewe. As her vocabulary goes - to paraphrase Mrs. Aguilera - she needs to go back to basics.
I honestly don't know where to start! I've read bad books before but nothing comes close to this. Usually a bad book lacks strong characters, an interesting plot, witty and flowing dialogue but the writer is at least capable of forming a full sentence. Mrs. Crewe can't! Her work is so disjointed, choppy and peppered with syntactical and grammatical mistakes that it becomes incomprehensible.
I tried to keep notes but I was stopping every few phrases and it soon became apparent if I kept this up I'd have to quote the whole book. So here is just a sample of the madness that is Mrs. Crewe professional writing:
1. "Cracked windows, cracked walls, cracked minds. Don’t make them angry or there will be cracked skulls.
Grey-painted walls, grey-tiled floors. Once-white night gowns, now grey. The skin of the inmates. Grey. The metal-framed bed. The bedding. Grey, grey, grey. The bars on the window...Black. Imagery ruined. Correction - prison of the cracked, grey and black"
Those are not even the ramblings of a mad woman, this is Terminator analyzing his surroundings after a successful landing, just read it out loud with a mechanical voice.
2. "Who did you say you are?"
Your death, strange human. I mean, your injury.
Schilling!! I wonder how such crippling dialog has escaped action screenwriters thus far!
3. I push myself on to my back, blinking the confused clouds from my eyes
I can only assume she means the 'clouds of confusion' because I've never seen a confused cloud. How would a cloud be confused? Would it look around it and say "Oh, dear am I too close to the ground to be a cloud or too far away to be fog? I'm confused!!"
4. In the dance of death I am a ballerina, a leaping lady
A leaping lady? Is that a term in ballet? If so I stand corrected, though I don't have the slightest idea how would being a ballerina be an advantage in a "dance of death". Any war dances I've ever come across simulate battle and any fight I've ever been in would destroy a ballerina where she stood. Are we to assume Meda would escape her pressures with a split leap or a grand jeté?
A metaphor has to make some sense!!!
5. Instead, I lie in a pool of my own deflated arrogance
Kill me!! Whatever can be deflated would never lie in a pool!! One is connected to volatile, the other to liquid substances. Come on!!
Example 1:
"His shoulders slumped and he hung there like a deflated balloon, all the fight out of him",
Example 2:
"Her knees buckled; she lowered herself to the floor and lay there in a pool of dread, temples thumping to the beat of her racing heart."
How hard can it be?!?!
6. An attempt at a beard (fail)
"An attempt at a beard; failing tragically",
"A tragic attempt at a bread",
"An attempt at a beard which resulted at an epic fail".....I could go on. You claim to be a writer, don't be lazy damn you.
7. The words have no sooner slithered from his lips than the boy lobs a brown, grapefruit-sized ball into the room.
Did the copy editor die before he was finished and they decided to wing it?
"No sooner had the words slithered from his lips than the boy lobbed a brown, grapefruit-sized ball into the room."
or
"As soon as the words slithered from his lips the boy lobs a brown, grapefruit-sized ball into the room."
She used to be a lawyer?
8. A rust-colored couch is tipped on its back
A rust-colored couch? Not a couch the color of rust?
9. My...specialness was one of those we'll-talk-about-it-when-you're-older topics. Turns out, it wasn't my getting older that became the issue, but my mom's.
I'm crying! This is sad! What is she trying to say?
10. Ding-ding-ding! I try to dial down the curiosity in my expression from tell-me-now-before-I-rip your-head-off-and-try-to-suck-the-truth-out-of-it to "Please, do go on." It must have worked because he keeps talking instead of trying to run.
Oh, lord why have you forsaken us?
11. I reach out a gentle claw - err, hand - and place it on his forearm, tugging his attention from her smarts to my lovely-little-girl helplessness.
This isn't funny any more. I don't know if I can finish this fanfic.
12. Motorcycles. I could crush them in my little hands, pop them as if they were balloons. Quite possibly I could eat them, though passing them might be uncomfortable
So, so, so bad!!! Passing them might be uncomfortable? Who wants in their head the mental picture of someοone expelling a motorcycle from their body? Did anyone beta read this book or was Mrs. Crewe so secure in her talent that she deemed it unnecessary?
13. "Well, no, not exactly..." He shoots SOS eyes at Chi
I rest my case!!
It comes as no surprise that Mrs. Crewe's narration of events is idiotic and offensive.
Her main character is pinned to the wall, threatened with imminent death, and she has her take a pause and analyze the attire of the teenage boy that just "crouched" in. Mrs. Crewe loooooves crouching, it's her favorite position, all her characters crouch.
Later on she introduces a character with a disability, who also happens to be the only character with brains and a personality, only to continuously insult her:
"Chi will be first, as the bigger threat, then the gimp",
"[...] an odd parade. A grungy young man, a girl in a blood-soaked nightgown, a prancing puppy and a cyborg",
"I guess they gave her an extra wheel since she’s short a leg." e.c.t.
She succumbs to the same mistakes many other atrocious writers have made before her, such as giving her main characters knowledge they couldn't possibly possess.
"Are you OK?" he asks [...] But, it occurs to me he's probably asking about all the blood and not my emotional turmoil
No, Meda could not possibly know or guess that. They'd just been in a fight! Asking if she was ok was only natural, almost a reflex. If the writer wanted to bring attention to Meda's state she should have written something along the lines of:
"Are you OK?" he asked and I followed his eyes to my blood soaked nightgown.
Last but not least, Mrs. Crewe has no talent whatsoever in fleshing out a character. I didn't finish the book, so I only got to know Meda, Chi, Uri and Jo, but the character's I got to know remind me more of caricatures.
The only reason Meda's behavior could be justified is if she were mentally unstable. There is no other excuse. She is an arrogant, overly confident, sadistic, reckless, offensive, ungrateful, royal bitch!!
And don't even get me started on Malachi (Chi) Dupaynes:
"I don't really worry too much about theories - just enough so I know what to kill." He grins toothily
Excuses me as I'll go and try to scrub the memory of this book from my brain.
Reading this book made my head hurt! It literally caused physical pain. Two chapters in and I started wondering whether I had masochistic tendencies after all. Why else keep reading?
This is a T.E.R.R.I.B.L.E. book!
The dialog is absurd, the prose is atrocious - a ten year old could have done a better job - the syntax is confusing, the metaphors are dreadful and someone should take thesaurus away from Mrs. Crewe. As her vocabulary goes - to paraphrase Mrs. Aguilera - she needs to go back to basics.
I honestly don't know where to start! I've read bad books before but nothing comes close to this. Usually a bad book lacks strong characters, an interesting plot, witty and flowing dialogue but the writer is at least capable of forming a full sentence. Mrs. Crewe can't! Her work is so disjointed, choppy and peppered with syntactical and grammatical mistakes that it becomes incomprehensible.
I tried to keep notes but I was stopping every few phrases and it soon became apparent if I kept this up I'd have to quote the whole book. So here is just a sample of the madness that is Mrs. Crewe professional writing:
1. "Cracked windows, cracked walls, cracked minds. Don’t make them angry or there will be cracked skulls.
Grey-painted walls, grey-tiled floors. Once-white night gowns, now grey. The skin of the inmates. Grey. The metal-framed bed. The bedding. Grey, grey, grey. The bars on the window...Black. Imagery ruined. Correction - prison of the cracked, grey and black"
Those are not even the ramblings of a mad woman, this is Terminator analyzing his surroundings after a successful landing, just read it out loud with a mechanical voice.
2. "Who did you say you are?"
Your death, strange human. I mean, your injury.
Schilling!! I wonder how such crippling dialog has escaped action screenwriters thus far!
3. I push myself on to my back, blinking the confused clouds from my eyes
I can only assume she means the 'clouds of confusion' because I've never seen a confused cloud. How would a cloud be confused? Would it look around it and say "Oh, dear am I too close to the ground to be a cloud or too far away to be fog? I'm confused!!"
4. In the dance of death I am a ballerina, a leaping lady
A leaping lady? Is that a term in ballet? If so I stand corrected, though I don't have the slightest idea how would being a ballerina be an advantage in a "dance of death". Any war dances I've ever come across simulate battle and any fight I've ever been in would destroy a ballerina where she stood. Are we to assume Meda would escape her pressures with a split leap or a grand jeté?
A metaphor has to make some sense!!!
5. Instead, I lie in a pool of my own deflated arrogance
Kill me!! Whatever can be deflated would never lie in a pool!! One is connected to volatile, the other to liquid substances. Come on!!
Example 1:
"His shoulders slumped and he hung there like a deflated balloon, all the fight out of him",
Example 2:
"Her knees buckled; she lowered herself to the floor and lay there in a pool of dread, temples thumping to the beat of her racing heart."
How hard can it be?!?!
6. An attempt at a beard (fail)
"An attempt at a beard; failing tragically",
"A tragic attempt at a bread",
"An attempt at a beard which resulted at an epic fail".....I could go on. You claim to be a writer, don't be lazy damn you.
7. The words have no sooner slithered from his lips than the boy lobs a brown, grapefruit-sized ball into the room.
Did the copy editor die before he was finished and they decided to wing it?
"No sooner had the words slithered from his lips than the boy lobbed a brown, grapefruit-sized ball into the room."
or
"As soon as the words slithered from his lips the boy lobs a brown, grapefruit-sized ball into the room."
She used to be a lawyer?
8. A rust-colored couch is tipped on its back
A rust-colored couch? Not a couch the color of rust?
9. My...specialness was one of those we'll-talk-about-it-when-you're-older topics. Turns out, it wasn't my getting older that became the issue, but my mom's.
I'm crying! This is sad! What is she trying to say?
10. Ding-ding-ding! I try to dial down the curiosity in my expression from tell-me-now-before-I-rip your-head-off-and-try-to-suck-the-truth-out-of-it to "Please, do go on." It must have worked because he keeps talking instead of trying to run.
Oh, lord why have you forsaken us?
11. I reach out a gentle claw - err, hand - and place it on his forearm, tugging his attention from her smarts to my lovely-little-girl helplessness.
This isn't funny any more. I don't know if I can finish this fanfic.
12. Motorcycles. I could crush them in my little hands, pop them as if they were balloons. Quite possibly I could eat them, though passing them might be uncomfortable
So, so, so bad!!! Passing them might be uncomfortable? Who wants in their head the mental picture of someοone expelling a motorcycle from their body? Did anyone beta read this book or was Mrs. Crewe so secure in her talent that she deemed it unnecessary?
13. "Well, no, not exactly..." He shoots SOS eyes at Chi
I rest my case!!
It comes as no surprise that Mrs. Crewe's narration of events is idiotic and offensive.
Her main character is pinned to the wall, threatened with imminent death, and she has her take a pause and analyze the attire of the teenage boy that just "crouched" in. Mrs. Crewe loooooves crouching, it's her favorite position, all her characters crouch.
Later on she introduces a character with a disability, who also happens to be the only character with brains and a personality, only to continuously insult her:
"Chi will be first, as the bigger threat, then the gimp",
"[...] an odd parade. A grungy young man, a girl in a blood-soaked nightgown, a prancing puppy and a cyborg",
"I guess they gave her an extra wheel since she’s short a leg." e.c.t.
She succumbs to the same mistakes many other atrocious writers have made before her, such as giving her main characters knowledge they couldn't possibly possess.
"Are you OK?" he asks [...] But, it occurs to me he's probably asking about all the blood and not my emotional turmoil
No, Meda could not possibly know or guess that. They'd just been in a fight! Asking if she was ok was only natural, almost a reflex. If the writer wanted to bring attention to Meda's state she should have written something along the lines of:
"Are you OK?" he asked and I followed his eyes to my blood soaked nightgown.
Last but not least, Mrs. Crewe has no talent whatsoever in fleshing out a character. I didn't finish the book, so I only got to know Meda, Chi, Uri and Jo, but the character's I got to know remind me more of caricatures.
The only reason Meda's behavior could be justified is if she were mentally unstable. There is no other excuse. She is an arrogant, overly confident, sadistic, reckless, offensive, ungrateful, royal bitch!!
And don't even get me started on Malachi (Chi) Dupaynes:
"I don't really worry too much about theories - just enough so I know what to kill." He grins toothily
Excuses me as I'll go and try to scrub the memory of this book from my brain.
Pretty exciting stuff. I liked the actions scenes in particular and I really liked that instead of romance being a big relationship focus, it was the protagonist bonding into besties with another girl. Only three stars because I found the main character kind of grating. Not because she's jerky--I actually liked that. It's just at least once per page she had to explicitly remind the reader she was "evil" usually in a bad joke that a Catskills comedian would find schlocky. If that kind of thing doesn't bother you, it's definitely worth checking out.
This book suffered from reading far too young and sarcastic teenager. It felt like a cheap knockoff of the Shadow Hunters series. Chi is very Jace (though fortunately the protagonist is a stronger female).
I just couldn't get over the writing style. It was too wry and self-aware. It bored me. Example:
"The discussion goes something like this:
Rude comment. Jo
Fake attempt to be included in dangerous mission. Me
Slightly less asinine plan involving the two of us. Uri
Rude comment. Almost-sane plan using Chi and me. Jo.
Overprotective response. Chi"
As well as gems like this:
"In the pregnant pause lies are born in my head, woven by clever spiders to be spun from my mouth:
Either the book is too teenage in the writing or its way too verbose and metaphoric. I found the contrast super jarring. I was interested in the plot and gave it my best shot to finish, but I couldn't push through the writing style. Disappointing.
I just couldn't get over the writing style. It was too wry and self-aware. It bored me. Example:
"The discussion goes something like this:
Rude comment. Jo
Fake attempt to be included in dangerous mission. Me
Slightly less asinine plan involving the two of us. Uri
Rude comment. Almost-sane plan using Chi and me. Jo.
Overprotective response. Chi"
As well as gems like this:
"In the pregnant pause lies are born in my head, woven by clever spiders to be spun from my mouth:
Either the book is too teenage in the writing or its way too verbose and metaphoric. I found the contrast super jarring. I was interested in the plot and gave it my best shot to finish, but I couldn't push through the writing style. Disappointing.
If you're looking for a book that's told in a witty, snarky, and sarcastic way with good relationship building and where the girl doesn't get the "guy that changes her life", this is the story for you. (Don't worry that's not a spoiler. It's very clear early on that nothing is going to happen between them.)
The story is told by Meda who starts off by saying she's a soul eater but then turns out to be a half-demon. She's snarky and fun and it makes the story fun to read, but the plot just falls flat. The only things I liked about it where the things listed above. It just didn't seem very exciting, it didn't capture my attention much at all. I wasn't itching to read it every chance I got.
The story is told by Meda who starts off by saying she's a soul eater but then turns out to be a half-demon. She's snarky and fun and it makes the story fun to read, but the plot just falls flat. The only things I liked about it where the things listed above. It just didn't seem very exciting, it didn't capture my attention much at all. I wasn't itching to read it every chance I got.
adventurous
lighthearted
fast-paced
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
I am devastated. I LOVED this book so much until we got to Meda's decision. I mean, I never really expected her to choose the demons/bad guys since that's just never how these stories go. But I was just so disappointed because I really loved Meda's character! She's such a vibrant personality. She's snarky, violent, manipulative, and a little morally gray—just how I love my main characters. I think that's why it hurt so much more when the inevitable happened and Meda decides the power of friendship and humanity is stronger than the life she could have with the demons. It really killed me especially since her father (basically demon king cuz why wouldn't our main character be a "chosen one" lol) is actually a pretty good dad as far as "evil dads" go.
If you couldn't tell (or didn't want to read the spoilers), the plot was extremely predictable and full of very common tropes. The only classically awful trope missing was the love triangle lol. I heard the second book is even better so I have high hopes!
If you couldn't tell (or didn't want to read the spoilers), the plot was extremely predictable and full of very common tropes. The only classically awful trope missing was the love triangle lol. I heard the second book is even better so I have high hopes!