Reviews

Traitor to the Throne by Alwyn Hamilton

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coffeepensandpaper's review against another edition

slow-paced

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

2.0

everything I enjoyed about the first book is missing here.

The only consistency is Amani's flakey character. Her motivations are so unclear. Since book one I had the feeling she i only joined the rebellion because she is so starved for a family rather than her believes, so I wasn't too surprised that she seem be swayed by every nice thing someone did.

I was also disappointed that the book seem to tease that there isn't clean good and evil and that the rebellion isn't as righteous as it seems to be (apparently that was also how the book was advertised, but I didn't read the blurb), only to be let down by a generic plot twist at the end.

biancas_library's review against another edition

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challenging dark tense slow-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

2.0

I was so excited for the sequel because I really liked the premise of the first book and was excited to see where the story went next. The blurb promised me a compelling second book where our main character finds out that the rebellion is not what it seems like and the sultan isn't as bad as he's made out to be. However, this plot twist never came and I was left waiting for it to come and for the story to get interesting. So maybe blame my disappointment on false advertising.
Aside from that, though, the story was just plain up boring. First of all, I was thoroughly confused by the time jump and thought I accidentally picked up the third book at first. But no, the time jump was on purpose. To me, this was not the smartest decision. I was left wanting for more - I did not like that we were told about everything that had happened instead of it being shown to us. I also didn't like that suddenly, Jin and Amani weren't the happy couple we last saw them as but instead everything was messed up. Again, I would've preferred to see that happen on page instead of just being told that they had issues and hadn't seen each other for quite some time.
But instead of staying with the rebellion and focusing on that, Amani is captured by the Sultan and we follow her life in the palace. For some reason, all her acquaintances from her home town (which by the way, is always described as being as far away as possible so it makes even less sense that they all turn up) magically turn up in the palace and help our main character. If it had happened once, I would've let it slide, but it happened too many times to be believable. Spending most of the book in the palace meant, that we barely got to see the rebellion and its workings and we barely got to see Jin.
Also, Amani felt like a completely different character to me and a washed-down version of her badass persona from the first book. Maybe, if we had followed her time in the rebellion in the five-month-time-jump, her change in behavior would've been understandable.
While I really liked the idea of stories within stories that the author tried to weave, this sequel couldn't hold up to the first book and I won't be continuing with the last.