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booksthatburn's review against another edition
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
4.0
This is a YA novel with an aspec protagonist (my best guess is she'd say demi if that language were available) who ends up in a relationship with someone who meets her on her terms rather than demanding she meet his. It's nice to see an aspec character whose aro/ace nature isn't overwritten or ignored in order to give her a relationship, how she is is part of how they are together.
It's about loneliness, abuse, and healing, including abuse to children and animals, so please be aware that those are major themes in the book.
The world building is solid, with enough detail to make later revelations feel important. The explanations feel natural, occurring as something happens or Katsa thinks of some detail. This makes it feel like the world is slowly being revealed even though early on it's not new to the protagonist. I like Po, he had a difficult set of things to balance and overall I like how he is with Katsa. His situation towards the end skirts some potentially problematic ableist tropes but manages to not make it seem like his late-acquired disability is what gives him greater control of his powers. YMMV on whether this works, I think it does because of the precise order of events.
Overall I like this a lot and I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the series.
It's about loneliness, abuse, and healing, including abuse to children and animals, so please be aware that those are major themes in the book.
The world building is solid, with enough detail to make later revelations feel important. The explanations feel natural, occurring as something happens or Katsa thinks of some detail. This makes it feel like the world is slowly being revealed even though early on it's not new to the protagonist. I like Po, he had a difficult set of things to balance and overall I like how he is with Katsa. His situation towards the end skirts some potentially problematic ableist tropes but manages to not make it seem like his late-acquired disability is what gives him greater control of his powers. YMMV on whether this works, I think it does because of the precise order of events.
Overall I like this a lot and I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the series.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder and Death
Moderate: Sexism, Misogyny, Kidnapping, Child abuse, Animal cruelty, Medical content, Blood, Vomit, Violence, Torture, Animal death, Death of parent, and Child death
Minor: Sexual content and Sexual assault
elle_dee's review
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
tense
fast-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
5.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Blood, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Misogyny, Murder, Torture, and Violence
agoldendear's review
adventurous
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
I was a bit surprised to see that this book has a four-star rating on average because there were a few big issues I had with this book. That is what I will be mainly be covering in this review, although I will also talk about some things that I liked. The book is certainly not all bad; clearly many people enjoyed it. It was just really not my cup of tea.
1. Characters: I can see why people would like Katsa, the main character. She's one of those strong, silent, fend-for-myself, socially-inept female leads who needs to learn to trust people. But I feel like I've definitely read more successful versions of this character trope recently. Probably the main thing that annoyed me about Katsa was how a good chunk of her development occurred, particularly in the first half of the book. It felt less like gradual development and more like Katsa coming across a mental dilemma, spending several pages consumed in thought about it, and then coming to a decision. One such issue was the love story, whichstarted off normally until Katsa realized she liked Po at around the 50% mark of the book, then sulked about not wanting to be tied down for a few pages until she realized she didn't have to marry him for them to have a relationship, and then she was totally devoted to him for the rest of the book. Side note--this book has the "painful virgin sex" trope. Which is just great (sarcastic). At least it wasn't graphic. Non-spoiler version: the pacing was weird, so I wasn't really a fan.
The other two characters who I would consider "main" are Po and Bitterblue. Po, the love interest, is probably my favorite character, mainly because I thought the secrets he carried and plot twists that revolved around him were the most interesting parts of the book. Aside from that, I honestly can't remember much about Po's personality except that he likes pretty things and being free, and that he's a generally nice person. So he didn't leave much of a lasting impact on me. Bitterblue, on the other hand, only shows up about two-thirds of the way through the book. I also couldn't tell you much about her personality, but I'm a little more forgiving of that because she has her own book to flesh her out. But that's why I find it so odd that two-thirds of the way through this book, she suddenly becomes such a huge part of this story after being hardly mentioned prior.
There was one aspect to the character development that I found pretty good--mainly how the book managed to make problems that couldn't simply be fixed by Graces. Throughout much of the book, the main characters, particularly Katsa, are pretty overpowered because of their magical Grace powers (I mean this in the physical/fighting sense--they do have some internal/mental issues to work out most of the time). That's why I really liked when things started getting down to the wire and Katsa couldn't just punch away all her problems (well, probably not "punch", but you get the gist of what I mean).
2. The Main Plot and Big Bad Guy: This is where my biggest issues with the book lie. I feel that even if you are someone who loved Po and Katsa, you may still be able to see that the plot was a bit lacking. For one thing, I really don't think that much interesting stuff happens in this book. There's a small amount of actual combat, and much of the dialogue is just people talking over meals. For me at least, this book had too much "telling" compared to "showing", and the stuff that was shown was often over way too quickly. Case in point: the big bad guy, who I will be putting into spoilers. Please be warned--it's quite spoilery.
We begin to suspect that King Leck is a bad guy fairly early on, which I liked. We also deduce that he may in fact have a powerful Grace, which I also liked. I was looking forward to the characters having to infiltrate his kingdom, investigate him and perhaps run into some fights along the way. But no--as soon as they arrive, they immediately see him do something absolutely unforgivable which also happens to reveal that they were right about his Grace. So they turn around and run away. The next time we, the readers, actually get to see King Leck again is the scene in which Katsa kills him with one hit and minimal effort. In between those two encounters, Po gets to go fight him, but of course we don't get to see that battle. Obviously the main reason we don't get to see him very much is because his Grace is completely debilitating to almost everyone in his vicinity, but to that I say he should just have a different Grace if it's that big of an obstacle to having him in the story. I don't want a nonexistent main villain.
3. Worldbuilding: Another thing that lacks in "showing" is the worldbuilding. I understand that some fantasies are looser with worldbuilding than others, but I guess I like them more fleshed out.
In general, I'm not a huge fan of Graces. It's a very loose sort of magic--having a Grace basically just makes you really good at a certain specific thing, and the extent of that "good-ness" varies from person to person. I do like that Graces have the potential to be misunderstood, even by the person with said Grace, but overall I tend to prefer magic systems with more rules to them. Nonetheless, I wish we saw more of the Graces in this book. Most of them that we see are really violent or powerful ones, although we are told that a lot of people get innocent ones, like swimming. Because of this, I hope there is a bigger variety of Graces that show up in the next books in the series.
The other thing that isn't very fleshed out is the world itself. I liked how it was easy to remember where each kingdom was due to their extremely unsubtle names (Nander, Sunder, Estill, Wester, Middluns), but I only got the sense that they were generic fantasy kingdoms. We did get some really interesting secondhand details about the structure of Monsea (mountain kingdom) and the culture of Lienid (island kingdom), but the main characters were present in each of these locations for such a short amount of time that we hardly got to actually "see" anything. Once again, I hope the world is expanded upon in future books.
TLDR: I wish this book's characters and world were more fleshed out and the story had better pacing. That's basically it.
1. Characters: I can see why people would like Katsa, the main character. She's one of those strong, silent, fend-for-myself, socially-inept female leads who needs to learn to trust people. But I feel like I've definitely read more successful versions of this character trope recently. Probably the main thing that annoyed me about Katsa was how a good chunk of her development occurred, particularly in the first half of the book. It felt less like gradual development and more like Katsa coming across a mental dilemma, spending several pages consumed in thought about it, and then coming to a decision. One such issue was the love story, which
The other two characters who I would consider "main" are Po and Bitterblue. Po, the love interest, is probably my favorite character, mainly because I thought the secrets he carried and plot twists that revolved around him were the most interesting parts of the book. Aside from that, I honestly can't remember much about Po's personality except that he likes pretty things and being free, and that he's a generally nice person. So he didn't leave much of a lasting impact on me. Bitterblue, on the other hand, only shows up about two-thirds of the way through the book. I also couldn't tell you much about her personality, but I'm a little more forgiving of that because she has her own book to flesh her out. But that's why I find it so odd that two-thirds of the way through this book, she suddenly becomes such a huge part of this story after being hardly mentioned prior.
There was one aspect to the character development that I found pretty good--mainly how the book managed to make problems that couldn't simply be fixed by Graces. Throughout much of the book, the main characters, particularly Katsa, are pretty overpowered because of their magical Grace powers (I mean this in the physical/fighting sense--they do have some internal/mental issues to work out most of the time). That's why I really liked when things started getting down to the wire and Katsa couldn't just punch away all her problems (well, probably not "punch", but you get the gist of what I mean).
2. The Main Plot and Big Bad Guy: This is where my biggest issues with the book lie. I feel that even if you are someone who loved Po and Katsa, you may still be able to see that the plot was a bit lacking. For one thing, I really don't think that much interesting stuff happens in this book. There's a small amount of actual combat, and much of the dialogue is just people talking over meals. For me at least, this book had too much "telling" compared to "showing", and the stuff that was shown was often over way too quickly. Case in point: the big bad guy, who I will be putting into spoilers. Please be warned--it's quite spoilery.
3. Worldbuilding: Another thing that lacks in "showing" is the worldbuilding. I understand that some fantasies are looser with worldbuilding than others, but I guess I like them more fleshed out.
In general, I'm not a huge fan of Graces. It's a very loose sort of magic--having a Grace basically just makes you really good at a certain specific thing, and the extent of that "good-ness" varies from person to person. I do like that Graces have the potential to be misunderstood, even by the person with said Grace, but overall I tend to prefer magic systems with more rules to them. Nonetheless, I wish we saw more of the Graces in this book. Most of them that we see are really violent or powerful ones, although we are told that a lot of people get innocent ones, like swimming. Because of this, I hope there is a bigger variety of Graces that show up in the next books in the series.
The other thing that isn't very fleshed out is the world itself. I liked how it was easy to remember where each kingdom was due to their extremely unsubtle names (Nander, Sunder, Estill, Wester, Middluns), but I only got the sense that they were generic fantasy kingdoms. We did get some really interesting secondhand details about the structure of Monsea (mountain kingdom) and the culture of Lienid (island kingdom), but the main characters were present in each of these locations for such a short amount of time that we hardly got to actually "see" anything. Once again, I hope the world is expanded upon in future books.
TLDR: I wish this book's characters and world were more fleshed out and the story had better pacing. That's basically it.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence and Torture
Moderate: Pedophilia, Animal death, and Death
Minor: Sexual content and Child death
Regarding disabilities:readingrat's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.5
One of my all-time favourit YA romantasy
+ creative and not overdone idea
+ fast paced page-turner
+ worldbuildig so basic, even my squirrel brain could keep up without going back to the map everytime a place was mentioned
+ no cliffhanger & no need to binge the whole series
+ finally a loveable and nice loveinterest in a YA book 🥳 No "He is a walking red flag but I don't care bacause he's hot"
+ romance was there but not too much
- infodumping in the beginning
- ShE iS nOt LiKe OtHeR gIrLs
- protagonist is a little too overpowered. She can do nearly everything. Yes, I know, it's because of her Grace, but it still leads to:
- ridiculously fast resolving of every problem
- Plottwists can be seen from space (but it's extremely satisfying, if your predictions turn out to be true)
- style of writing is a little inconsistent. Some sentences don't make sense, but it's not to bad for a debut novel
- kind of insta-love? Not love at first sight, you can see the feelings and relationship develop. But it's way too early to suddenly talk about love
=> Undeniable fan-fiction & Mary Sue elements, but I enjoyed every minute of it
+ creative and not overdone idea
+ fast paced page-turner
+ worldbuildig so basic, even my squirrel brain could keep up without going back to the map everytime a place was mentioned
+ no cliffhanger & no need to binge the whole series
+ finally a loveable and nice loveinterest in a YA book 🥳 No "He is a walking red flag but I don't care bacause he's hot"
+ romance was there but not too much
- infodumping in the beginning
- ShE iS nOt LiKe OtHeR gIrLs
- protagonist is a little too overpowered. She can do nearly everything. Yes, I know, it's because of her Grace, but it still leads to:
- ridiculously fast resolving of every problem
- Plottwists can be seen from space (but it's extremely satisfying, if your predictions turn out to be true)
- style of writing is a little inconsistent. Some sentences don't make sense, but it's not to bad for a debut novel
- kind of insta-love? Not love at first sight, you can see the feelings and relationship develop. But it's way too early to suddenly talk about love
=> Undeniable fan-fiction & Mary Sue elements, but I enjoyed every minute of it
Content Warnings
Moderate: Animal death, Death, Murder, Death of parent, Violence, and Animal cruelty
Minor: Kidnapping, Child abuse, Torture, and Child death
canascorner's review
adventurous
emotional
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Gaslighting, Murder, and Violence
Moderate: Child abuse, Emotional abuse, Animal death, Child death, Sexual harassment, and Death of parent
Minor: Sexual content
anna_m_k's review
adventurous
emotional
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
4.75
Content Warnings
Moderate: Child abuse
Minor: Child death
victorianrogue's review
adventurous
emotional
funny
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
5.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Blood, Death, Death of parent, Murder, Torture, Violence, and Sexual content
Minor: Child abuse and Child death
kindredbooks's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Content Warnings
Moderate: Violence and Death
Minor: Animal death, Child death, and Death of parent
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