Reviews

Child of the Prophecy by Juliet Marillier

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thebookfaerie's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional slow-paced

4.0

rosetaylor2's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense slow-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

4.25

shanellewrites's review against another edition

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3.0

Unfortunately, not a great development/installment of the Sevenwaters series.

While I did not factor this in to my rating, I do want to note that the audiobook is the worst audiobook I have ever listened to. It's hard to know how much of it was due to technical difficulties when the narrator was recording, how much was poor audio editing, or what, but I really do not recommend listening to this book on audio at all. To be clear, I don't have a problem with the narrator. They are talented and I enjoyed listening to them. There were some pronunciations that were incorrect, or varied from pronunciations used in the two previous audiobooks, but the biggest issue was that parts of the text that sounded like they had been edited in from a completely different session. They were very loud and really took me out of the story, and from about a quarter of the book through to the end, they happened what felt like every 10-20 minutes. Clearly there was no quality control, or the producers/publishers decided they didn't want to spend the money to either remedy or redo it.

In terms of the actual story, writing, and characters, they all felt much weaker than Daughter of the Forest in particular. I don't know how the next books in the series will measure up, but I really, really hope that they are more in line with the first two than with this one.

stephxsu's review against another edition

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3.0

It seems odd to attach the word "disappointing" to anything by Juliet Marillier, she of the unparalleled fantasy works. But CHILD OF THE PROPHECY is generally considered to be one of her weakest, and even knowing that way before going into the book, I was still struck by how disappointed I was. Oh, CHILD OF THE PROPHECY is still miles above 95% of all published books with its fluid, lyrical writing and respect of its characters' multidimensionality. However, two things doomed this book from entering the Annals of Eternal Worship in my opinion--one avoidable, one not so much.

First was the utterly overdramatic portrayal of Lady Oonagh, who, yes, makes a reappearance in this book as, once again, the villain. Only this time Lady Oonagh is ten times worse than she was portrayed in Daughter of the Forest, to the point where she resembles a caricature of a cackling crone using her powers for evil. It got to the point where I was doing all-body cringes whenever her insult- and exclamation point-ridden dialogue appeared on the page, which they unfortunately did with more and more frequency toward the end of the book. Lady Oonagh was a disappointment after the marvelous subtleties in characterization displayed by Marillier in the previous books in the trilogy.

Secondly, and perhaps unavoidably, was how the story set Fainne up to lurch on the edge of the Too Stupid To Live cliff. Such are the woes of a book where the main plot revolves around the main character being blackmailed/terrorized/otherwise manipulated into doing things she does not want to do.

And on a final note, did Eamonn

Spoiler

really have to turn into a lecherous middle-aged man who is randomly redeemed through his act of sacrifice at the very end of the book