Reviews with content warning for Injury/Injury detail - Vespertine

Despite loving Margaret Rogerson’s other works, I held of from reading Vespertine for so long, because I wasn’t sure about the premise of a shared consciousness. However having recently enjoyed The Shepard King duology and its version of the same premise, I was inspired to give it a go, and I’m so glad I did!

I throughly enjoyed the magic system, the found family aspected and the snarky banter between Artemisia and Revenant.

I love how the book finished without a cliffhanger but with the hope of future adventures. Which Saint do we need to pray to make it happen?!

Content Warnings

bree_h_reads's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional tense medium-paced

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

3.25

I was really excited to read Vespertine after reading an Enchantment of Ravens and seeing the higher overall rating for this. While I still enjoyed it and will definitely be continuing the series, there were some areas I found a bit lacking.

To start, I really enjoyed the characters. I think every one of them felt fairly well rounded and I enjoyed the scenes they were in. I quickly got attached with the limited page time provided to the secondary characters. Seeing how they interacted with each other and the implied off page interactions made them feel alive. The big three being Artemisia, the Reverent, and Leander (at least for me). I loved the dynamic between Artemisia and the Revenant, watching it grow from begrudging ally-ship to genuine care and concern. Leander and Artemisia’s dynamic too was extremely interesting, reading how they played off of and reas each other. I hope to see more of their dynamic in the future!

In contrast to the interesting characters, I found the flow of the story and the reveal of plot twist to be a bit lacking, though not by much. While overall I think the story flowed fairly well, the foreshadowing and build to the plot twist is where it fell short. I figured it out maybe part way through the book, not because of any hints dropped by the text itself, but because that’s just how these books go. If the book had built up to the reveal and better left the hints, then it would have been up a star rating. Unfortunately, the twist is fairly easy to figure out if you’re at all familiar with popular trends in fantasy right now.

The world building was something else I largely enjoyed. While it could be a bit info dump-y at times, overall I found the delivery to be concise and within what the reader needed to know without bogging things down. There were only a couple details I thought were a bit strange given the overall world and religion. There’s a comment made in the book about the world only viewing women as something that can either become a nun or pop out babies. However, this seems somewhat out of sync with the rest of the world. They worship a goddess, women are the major players in their church, they have a young woman as they head of the church, the major (if not all) saints are women, and the devil figure is a man. It seems strange to me that the oppression of women it called out when the world seems to be dominated by them. I do understand that this is inspired by Joan of Arc and wanting to make a commentary on the treatment of women. It also feels asynchronies with the rest of the work where it never seems like women are viewed in this way. It took me out of it, and while (again) I understand wanting to make a point on how our society viewed/views and treats women the line took me out of the story for a bit.

I also think some of the themes could have been better explored. Artemisia is a nun, raised in a fairly sequestered convent who is quickly persecuted by the higher ups in her religion once she takes control of a powerful relic and saves several people. Throughout the book it feels like things are being setup for Artemisia and other characters to explore their feelings on the religion, what they’re taught, religious trauma, and corruption within the hierarchy. Yet it never really pulls at those strings and dives into them. Considering how the book is setup and what seems to be implied throughout the text, I wish it were a larger focus. While I don’t expect Artemisia to abandon her religion, I wish more time had been given to explore the issues within it. Hopefully it’s something we’ll get more of in later books, assuming the talk of a series is true.

Overall, I enjoyed this book and will happily read the others if/once they come out. I do, however, think this book could have benefited from a few more revisions and being a little bit longer to better build up to twist and explore themes.

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sonygaystation's review against another edition

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adventurous dark funny mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.5

The character growth in this book was so *chef’s kiss*!!! Also the revenant has my whole heart

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pointeshoebookworm's review against another edition

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adventurous funny sad medium-paced

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

5.0

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asiamd's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense 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

5.0

This book was sooooo good. I loved the main character and her revenant!! The way the author added depth and feelings to every character that came on the page was amazing. I really adore books that allow for villians to also be victims of pain and fear and I felt like this book did a great job of incorporating that wit a kind of anti-hero in the revenant as well as all the other spirits throughout the book. I really liked the different take on religion as well, while it was really similar to Christianity(?) with the blind belief of the people, the praying, and the saints, Rogerson also made it unique in the book by adding a more ghostlike twists that in my opinion added way more humanity to what the spirits were. Overall I really enjoyed this book and read it in one day 🤭 so 10/10

Content Warnings

aas's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional sad tense medium-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

4.25

Content Warnings

sapphicsoilscientist's review against another edition

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adventurous reflective medium-paced

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

4.0

I enjoyed this. It’s a good balance of metaphor for religious trauma and general healing from abuse. The audiobook was very fun as the voice of the Revenant was *chef’s kiss*

Content Warnings

leloly's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense medium-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? Yes

5.0

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