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readcharlotte's review against another edition
5.0
This was great! So much fun being back in Abeth. Yaz is not Nona, but I love her all the same. You can read this without having read the Book of the Ancestor trilogy.
kathrynevans's review against another edition
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
I have never read a book that is underground and not a sci-fi. The magic system is interesting but there is too much going on, always on the move going from one disaster to the next. The reason why I gave this book 3 stars is because I'm genuinely interested in where the plot is going rather than caring about the characters.
thestarsandthesky_5's review
The pacing was just really slow for me. It felt like something was always happening but nothing was happening at the same time. It was sad because I was intrigued in the storyline for a bit!
laelyn's review against another edition
2.0
"The Girl and the Stars" is my first novel by Mark Lawrence and I had high expectations. Lawrence is a fixture in current fantasy literature and I heard only good things about his work. Maybe I should have started with those earlier works, though, especially the Book of the Ancestor trilogy which apparently sets up the universe "The Girl and the Stars" takes place in.
Don't get me wrong, the book definitely stands on its own and sets up this new trilogy perfectly well, but I feel like it would have helped me to get into the world better. The world building is great but very dense, and I often felt like it didn't tell me everything because it expected me to know some things from the previous trilogy. It felt convoluted at times and I don't think I understand all of what was going on even after reading the whole book.
I really enjoy Lawrence's writing and the idea of this underground world, this forgotten city, of an Ancient mysterious people and children ritually sacrificed for what the people of this world consider the greater good is fascinating. I was really into it at first.
But then the book just started to... drag. The pacing is a weird one, with so many things happening while simultaneously nothing happening at all over long stretches of time which made me skip a page or two, admittedly. Another issue I had was, well, the characters. Yaz is, so far, a very typical fantasy heroine that really, really screams YA to me. Honestly, if not for very few brutal and graphic scenes and the very in-depth world building this reads like YA. Not that this is inherently a bad thing, I just didn't expect it from the author. But back to the characters - while the typical heroine, Yaz is also just not that complex and later on she started to annoy me quite a bit with some of the choices she was making. The rest of the cast is... kind of there? I don't feel like any of them are very fleshed out, not even her multiple possible love interests. Pretty sure I won't remember much about them after some time, and thus I simply didn't care that much about their fate.
The ending though, the ending is just amazing. I don't even mean the final fight, which I didn't really care about (mostly because, well, I didn't really care about the characters and because it was way too hectic), but the reveals afterwards and the very last sentence of the book were just. Chef's kiss. I'm not sure this alone will make me actually read the rest of the trilogy, but it's awesome - even though admittedly I cannot fathom how there will be enough interesting content for an entire trilogy.
All in all I'd give this a solid 2,5 stars, rounded down to 2. I liked the potential of certain characters, the generally intriguing world building and the prose, but the lack of characterization, the inconsistent pacing, the weak protagonist and the fact that I was simply bored after a while keep me from giving this a better rating. I'm honestly sorry about that because I wanted to love Lawrence's work just like most people seem to do. It just... didn't make me feel anything.
Don't get me wrong, the book definitely stands on its own and sets up this new trilogy perfectly well, but I feel like it would have helped me to get into the world better. The world building is great but very dense, and I often felt like it didn't tell me everything because it expected me to know some things from the previous trilogy. It felt convoluted at times and I don't think I understand all of what was going on even after reading the whole book.
I really enjoy Lawrence's writing and the idea of this underground world, this forgotten city, of an Ancient mysterious people and children ritually sacrificed for what the people of this world consider the greater good is fascinating. I was really into it at first.
But then the book just started to... drag. The pacing is a weird one, with so many things happening while simultaneously nothing happening at all over long stretches of time which made me skip a page or two, admittedly. Another issue I had was, well, the characters. Yaz is, so far, a very typical fantasy heroine that really, really screams YA to me. Honestly, if not for very few brutal and graphic scenes and the very in-depth world building this reads like YA. Not that this is inherently a bad thing, I just didn't expect it from the author. But back to the characters - while the typical heroine, Yaz is also just not that complex and later on she started to annoy me quite a bit with some of the choices she was making. The rest of the cast is... kind of there? I don't feel like any of them are very fleshed out, not even her multiple possible love interests. Pretty sure I won't remember much about them after some time, and thus I simply didn't care that much about their fate.
The ending though, the ending is just amazing. I don't even mean the final fight, which I didn't really care about (mostly because, well, I didn't really care about the characters and because it was way too hectic), but the reveals afterwards and the very last sentence of the book were just. Chef's kiss. I'm not sure this alone will make me actually read the rest of the trilogy, but it's awesome - even though admittedly I cannot fathom how there will be enough interesting content for an entire trilogy.
All in all I'd give this a solid 2,5 stars, rounded down to 2. I liked the potential of certain characters, the generally intriguing world building and the prose, but the lack of characterization, the inconsistent pacing, the weak protagonist and the fact that I was simply bored after a while keep me from giving this a better rating. I'm honestly sorry about that because I wanted to love Lawrence's work just like most people seem to do. It just... didn't make me feel anything.
mjporterauthor's review against another edition
4.0
The Girl and the Stars is set on the same world as The Book of the Ancestor, and I'm aware that there are many more stories that need to be told to fully understand Abeth. Not that new readers can't pick up from here. There is no need to have read The Books of the Ancestors.
I've heard a great deal about The Girl and the Stars on twitter and I was looking forward to reading it. The story starts strongly and Yaz is an enjoyable character to read about. The set up of the story is intriguing and not at all where I expected it to go. Foolishly, I thought I knew where Lawrence was going with this new trilogy. There are many fascinating elements and I was really enjoying exploring the landscape of 'the stars,'
Lawrence titillates with fragments of what's actually happening and what's happened in the past (he's a bit good at this) but I found I wanted to know more about that, and less about Yaz and her group of friends. And by the time I was a decent distance into the book, I was beginning to suffer from the same sensory deprivation as the characters. This probably isn't a good thing. My enjoyment of the story did drop away - the relentless pacing couldn't quite make up for my lessening enjoyment, and while the ending is bloody stunning, I can't help but think it could have been reached at least a hundred pages earlier!
I'm still very much looking forward to reading all the books in this new trilogy, but hopefully, they won't share the same setting!
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for my review copy.
I've heard a great deal about The Girl and the Stars on twitter and I was looking forward to reading it. The story starts strongly and Yaz is an enjoyable character to read about. The set up of the story is intriguing and not at all where I expected it to go. Foolishly, I thought I knew where Lawrence was going with this new trilogy. There are many fascinating elements and I was really enjoying exploring the landscape of 'the stars,'
Lawrence titillates with fragments of what's actually happening and what's happened in the past (he's a bit good at this) but I found I wanted to know more about that, and less about Yaz and her group of friends. And by the time I was a decent distance into the book, I was beginning to suffer from the same sensory deprivation as the characters. This probably isn't a good thing. My enjoyment of the story did drop away - the relentless pacing couldn't quite make up for my lessening enjoyment, and while the ending is bloody stunning, I can't help but think it could have been reached at least a hundred pages earlier!
I'm still very much looking forward to reading all the books in this new trilogy, but hopefully, they won't share the same setting!
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for my review copy.
leathor's review
medium-paced
3.25
story was good, the writing style is a bit weird, almost like it was translated to English, makes some of the sentences confusing.
mwplante's review against another edition
2.0
This is the first of Mark Lawrence's offerings that never really grabbed me. It's been a couple days since I finished and I'm struggling to remember how it ended, even. I've been a fan of his for a long enough time now that I'll probably pick up the next book to see if he can salvage Yaz's story and characterization, but I'm deeply disappointed with this one.
The strength of Lawrence's work has always been in his lovingly realized, flawed protagonists (and deuteragonist, in the case of Snorri). But Yaz feels like kind of a generic protagonist with not much to make her stand out. I assume there must have been a flaw in there somewhere, but I can't name what it would be. She's just very powerful in the quantum-magic system of her world, and not much else. Yaz is basically Zole from Nona Grey's trilogy, but without the interesting, standoffish personality -- Yaz is as featureless as the windswept ice she came from. I've lamented in the past that it feels like Lawrence gets so fixated on his main characters and their immediate companions/circle of friends that he forgets to lend characterization to his villains and ancillary characters. One would hope that Yaz's deficits would be made up for by a memorable cast of characters and villains, but if anything, the characters here are more confusing and harder to remember than ever before. Some of that might be on me for reading the book so fitfully, but if the book had been able to grab me the way Lawrence's earlier work did, I wouldn't have had that problem.
I did appreciate the hints at a grand unifying connection with Lawrence's Broken Empire-era Earth. It's always a baller move to make readers think you're writing totally unconnected worlds and then loop back around and connect them later on.
I came close to being hooked by the ambition of setting most of the book underground, in the deep darkness. I'm a huge fan of George RR Martin's "In the House of the Worm", which did a fantastic job of creating the sensation of tense helplessness in the reader that the protagonist must be feeling as he gropes his way through pitch darkness. By contrast, with The Girl and the Stars, I found myself by turns forgetting that they were meant to be in such a dark place, and then remembering and being annoyed by the lack of acknowledgements of the difficulty that posed. I suppose in the latter part of the novel they're all just seeing by Yaz's stars? In any case, I was left unsatisfied with the underuse of this aspect of the setting.
Mark Lawrence is an impressive ideas man, in any case, and I have some hope that he can make Yaz more interesting with time. Looking back on my short Prince of Thorns review, it seems Jorg had to grow on me as well. Here's hoping Yaz will get a chance to stretch her legs now that she's topside!
The strength of Lawrence's work has always been in his lovingly realized, flawed protagonists (and deuteragonist, in the case of Snorri). But Yaz feels like kind of a generic protagonist with not much to make her stand out. I assume there must have been a flaw in there somewhere, but I can't name what it would be. She's just very powerful in the quantum-magic system of her world, and not much else. Yaz is basically Zole from Nona Grey's trilogy, but without the interesting, standoffish personality -- Yaz is as featureless as the windswept ice she came from. I've lamented in the past that it feels like Lawrence gets so fixated on his main characters and their immediate companions/circle of friends that he forgets to lend characterization to his villains and ancillary characters. One would hope that Yaz's deficits would be made up for by a memorable cast of characters and villains, but if anything, the characters here are more confusing and harder to remember than ever before. Some of that might be on me for reading the book so fitfully, but if the book had been able to grab me the way Lawrence's earlier work did, I wouldn't have had that problem.
I did appreciate the hints at a grand unifying connection with Lawrence's Broken Empire-era Earth. It's always a baller move to make readers think you're writing totally unconnected worlds and then loop back around and connect them later on.
I came close to being hooked by the ambition of setting most of the book underground, in the deep darkness. I'm a huge fan of George RR Martin's "In the House of the Worm", which did a fantastic job of creating the sensation of tense helplessness in the reader that the protagonist must be feeling as he gropes his way through pitch darkness. By contrast, with The Girl and the Stars, I found myself by turns forgetting that they were meant to be in such a dark place, and then remembering and being annoyed by the lack of acknowledgements of the difficulty that posed. I suppose in the latter part of the novel they're all just seeing by Yaz's stars? In any case, I was left unsatisfied with the underuse of this aspect of the setting.
Mark Lawrence is an impressive ideas man, in any case, and I have some hope that he can make Yaz more interesting with time. Looking back on my short Prince of Thorns review, it seems Jorg had to grow on me as well. Here's hoping Yaz will get a chance to stretch her legs now that she's topside!
lunainsomnia's review
adventurous
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.75
Overall definitely interesting, but the setup for the love polygon is obvious and it can drag on even in the middle of should be tense or fast paced scenes
andreab777's review
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
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