Reviews with content warning for Violence - Court of the Undying Seasons: A Deliciously Dark Romantic Fantasy

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Court of the Undying Seasons: A Deliciously Dark Romantic Fantasy by A.M. Strickland

8 reviews

wrongdecision's review against another edition

dark slow-paced

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

2.0

My feelings toward this book are messy.
All in all I did not enjoy the book in it's totality, eventhough there were scenes that made me laugh and scenes that had me giddy with excitement.

TLDR:
People who enjoy this genre and like the tropes that come with vampire romance typically will like or maybe even love this book.
I am not one of them.

Spoilers for major plot points from here on out.

The main characters:

MC Fin started out as interesting. Her hatred for vampires and the sacrifice for Sylvia gave the book an easy start that had me wanting to find out more about her.
Her still being in her late teens makes sense for a lot of her behavior, since many people that age are still very self centered and focused on personal goals instead of other people. In that sense I have to say that the author captured teenagers very well and wrote Fin realistically.
That's about all the good I can say about her as a character.
I have rarely stumbled across an MC more exhausting.
Fin walks over others with such a narrow minded, self centric world view that it makes it difficult to root for her.
Every character has flaws, especially at the start but Fin does not truly change until the very end of the book.
She keeps repeating the same things to the reader so often that it had me actually rolling my eyes at them eventually.
She acts brash and rebellious to everyone who tries with her and it gets more and more annoying the longer it goes on.
She will not listen to anyone, no matter who, and therefore runs into problems that could have easily been avoided.
I personally don't love conflict like this, it feels immature and unnecessary.
She is so unaware of the way she's treating others that at some point I wondered if the author thinks this way as well.
Fin never really apologizes for what they've actually done. Except to Kash, because at least it was obvious that stabbing him was wrong.
Although, even then she did not really learn and still rushed straight into accusing Claudia instead.

Gavron... I honestly don't feel much about him.
He has less character than Kashire and seems to really only to be there to be the LI and sort of mentor to Fin.
I didn't really catch any proper characteristics than 'fondly annoyed over Fin' or 'twisted in pain because of not being able to be with Fin' or 'the damsel in distress'
He had a short moment of setting boundaries after the fight between Fin and Kash but that was about it.
Pity.

Kashire thankfully went a little deeper and he was probably the most enjoyable character in the book, eventhough not by much.
A lot of him seemed very all over the place, which I guess fits to a chaos lover, and a lot of his jokes were immature and fell flat to me.
Somehow he still cared more about others than Fin did, eventhough his first appearance in the book literally had him kill a novice.
Generally he mellowed out a lot toward the end which I am a little confused by, maybe that was Jane's influence.

Marai only existed as 'the best friend' and she did not have any character beyond 'being into girls' and 'letting Fin walk all over her multiple times'.
Still, I liked her well enough and she brought at least a more leveled opinion into conversations with Fin, even if she never managed to convince her to not be stupid about things.
I do have to say that I am pleasantly surprised that she survived, I did expect her to die from the moment she was established as the best friend.

Plot:

A lot of the plot twists were predictable.
I figured out who Claudia is pretty early on, the ritual murder plot is already revealed in the synopsis and the twists that weren't predicatble were partially just because we/Fin didn't have enough information.
Still, decent enough and the more fun parts of the book!
When it actually focuses on building up a scene, it is interesting.

However.
The synopsis promised somewhat of a murder mystery and that must have been my biggest disappointment in the entire span of reading it.
The actual first murder happens 12 chapters in and is not actually investigated at all.
They act upset but then continuously forget to do any actual investigating besides "stalking Kash" (which btw never tells them anything) and they don't do anything besides.
After the second murder there is no researching how this could have happened, or why, there is no smarts required to solve anything, none of the fun parts of an actual mystery.
Jane comes in and tells Fin it's a ritual and that's it.
It feels like someone stole the reward from me as the reader.
I don't get to figure out anything, I just get to sit there and watch Fin accuse one person after the next and then wait for the obvious to be revealed: She's wrong every time!
It's sad, boring and disappointing.
It actually makes me a little mad that it's sold the way it is, as it was my main reason for picking it up.

Another minus point is an almost endless amount of exposition and each time it's done in a 'tell' form instead of 'show'. It gets boring and hard to concentrate on at times.

There are positives however.
Some of them are classes.
Learning about what each court teaches and how were very fun and so are the fight scenes.
They're well done and exciting and they did have me on the edge of my seat or even laughing.
I wish the book had had much more of them.

The romance:

From the moment Gavron bit her to heal her I knew he was going to be the LI.
Pity. It was predictable, they had no proper chemistry besides agreeing that 'enslaving humans is literally bad', she kept lusting after him but also shamelessly using him grossly for her own gain with no regards for his feelings (not that this mattered bc Fin is always forgiven bc of MC sickness) and I just started to skip scenes that got more heavy on the lusting because she would literally repeat herself so often in how much she wanted to drink his blood that I got tired of it.

The writing:

Not bad!
I did enjoy the style despite not being too keen on the first person style.
It was colorful enough and read easily in most parts!
Sometimes it did get very repetitive but mostly it was fine, I don't have much to say about it.

All in all...
I do think the comparison to SJM wasn't wrong. People who enjoy this typical vampire romance stuff will like it!
I went in hoping for something special and it wasn't. It isn't usually my style of book and I guess it was a refresher as to why.

I do still commend the author for the dedication and love put into the work, that is always deserved and I'm sure the characters are beloved by many.

Content Warnings

trippyotter's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

3.0

This is one of those books where I read every word and neither loved it nor hated it.

The premise of the story is intriguing and will definitely keep you on your toes.

But I'm a little disappointed with the timing between the reveal and the ending. Like others, I feel it was a bit rushed towards the end and could have used a bit more something something to add to the betrayals and revolutions.

Content Warnings