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fatimareadsbooks's review against another edition
3.0
How to rate this book is kind of a blurry affair for me because on one hand, it was pretty enjoyable, but on the other hand, so many things pissed me off. For a book about rival assassin groups involved in a blood feud, this was kind of underwhelming. Don’t get me wrong, there was some ass-kicking going on but the first half and middle of the book were just very… sluggish. The second half did have some slight improvement, though not by much.
Can we start off by saying how much I usually love assassin books? Bonus points if it’s in the Fantasy genre. So when I got this book you could definitely see why I was over the moon. I, however, was let down by the very poor assassining (assassinating?) going on. From the very first few pages we see our protagonist get poisoned by… wait for it… her mom. Here, we have everyone singing her praises and amaaazing “Clipper” skills then she goes and makes rookie mistakes all throughout the book. Forgets her weapons, gets poisoned by her mom, repeatedly gets caught by whoever she’s sneaking up on or trying to avoid (Captain LeFevre), and constantly gets injured and blames her less-than-exceptional fighting skills on these injuries. Girl, what type of assassin are you?!
The characters in this book really lacked complexity, especially the “bad guys”. They’re just handed to us on a silver platter like ‘Here, these people are evil; you have to hate them… They’re BAD.” The Da Vias, especially Estella and Val, were portrayed as the bad guys with no clues or justification given as to what the reasons behind their actions might be. The author did try with Estella with the whole pregnancy thing, but it just served to make it seem more lacking and hastily thrown together, in my opinion.
Also, as I mentioned a few paragraphs back, the pacing of the story seemed off. Three-fourths of this book consisted of pointless journeys and excursions that led to nowhere. To get from one place to another probably takes fifty pages of mind-numbing self-rumination from the protagonist. It was so goddamn boring – like, can we please just get back to the relevant plot material?! And speaking of plot, when we actually do get a fight, there always has to be some type of convenient rescue to aid our humble main characters -- like a mysterious smoke bomb or, say, How opportune.
However, not everything about this book was a plodding disappointment; there were redeemable aspects! For example, the romance between Lea and Alessio (I’m not calling him Les because ‘Lea and Les’? Hell nah.) It was obvious Alessio fell for Lea really early on, although she remained oblivious to it for the most part of the book. It still made my heart stutter. Alessio is an adorable mess – he reminded me of a puppy. He’s definitely one of my favorite characters in this book!
In a Fantasy book, the world building is usually what makes it or breaks it. In this case, the world building is what glued the whole damn story together. The setting was rich and imaginative and along with the writing, helped to immerse the reader into the story. Such unique world building and setting surely deserves an award!
All in all, this was an enjoyable book… just not that hooking. It was kind of underwhelming and screamed ‘debut author’, but it still had potential. I’ve heard that there will be a sequel, though I don’t know what it could possibly be about since this book already wrapped itself up. A companion novel about another character maybe? I’m pretty picky about fantasy, so if all the above appeals to you then go for it. There are definitely a lot of things that I enjoyed, more than I hated.
Many thanks to HarperCollins for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. This in no way impacted my views.
Can we start off by saying how much I usually love assassin books? Bonus points if it’s in the Fantasy genre. So when I got this book you could definitely see why I was over the moon. I, however, was let down by the very poor assassining (assassinating?) going on. From the very first few pages we see our protagonist get poisoned by… wait for it… her mom. Here, we have everyone singing her praises and amaaazing “Clipper” skills then she goes and makes rookie mistakes all throughout the book. Forgets her weapons, gets poisoned by her mom, repeatedly gets caught by whoever she’s sneaking up on or trying to avoid (Captain LeFevre), and constantly gets injured and blames her less-than-exceptional fighting skills on these injuries. Girl, what type of assassin are you?!
The characters in this book really lacked complexity, especially the “bad guys”. They’re just handed to us on a silver platter like ‘Here, these people are evil; you have to hate them… They’re BAD.” The Da Vias, especially Estella and Val, were portrayed as the bad guys with no clues or justification given as to what the reasons behind their actions might be. The author did try with Estella with the whole pregnancy thing, but it just served to make it seem more lacking and hastily thrown together, in my opinion.
Also, as I mentioned a few paragraphs back, the pacing of the story seemed off. Three-fourths of this book consisted of pointless journeys and excursions that led to nowhere. To get from one place to another probably takes fifty pages of mind-numbing self-rumination from the protagonist. It was so goddamn boring – like, can we please just get back to the relevant plot material?! And speaking of plot, when we actually do get a fight, there always has to be some type of convenient rescue to aid our humble main characters -- like a mysterious smoke bomb or, say,
Spoiler
a rescue from the goddess of Death and Resurrection herself!1!!However, not everything about this book was a plodding disappointment; there were redeemable aspects! For example, the romance between Lea and Alessio (I’m not calling him Les because ‘Lea and Les’? Hell nah.) It was obvious Alessio fell for Lea really early on, although she remained oblivious to it for the most part of the book. It still made my heart stutter. Alessio is an adorable mess – he reminded me of a puppy. He’s definitely one of my favorite characters in this book!
In a Fantasy book, the world building is usually what makes it or breaks it. In this case, the world building is what glued the whole damn story together. The setting was rich and imaginative and along with the writing, helped to immerse the reader into the story. Such unique world building and setting surely deserves an award!
All in all, this was an enjoyable book… just not that hooking. It was kind of underwhelming and screamed ‘debut author’, but it still had potential. I’ve heard that there will be a sequel, though I don’t know what it could possibly be about since this book already wrapped itself up. A companion novel about another character maybe? I’m pretty picky about fantasy, so if all the above appeals to you then go for it. There are definitely a lot of things that I enjoyed, more than I hated.
Many thanks to HarperCollins for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. This in no way impacted my views.
izzys_internet_bookshelf's review against another edition
2.0
2/5
At first I was excited to read this but I started to become tired so the book felt like a drag. Overall it was alright.
At first I was excited to read this but I started to become tired so the book felt like a drag. Overall it was alright.
nanlia's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
3.75
charms1976's review against another edition
1.0
I tried several times with this one, but just couldn't finish it. I am giving it the star rating of 1 for the 50% I read. Just couldn't connect with the writing, characters or plot.
nicolemhewitt's review against another edition
4.0
This review and many more can be found on my blog: Feed Your Fiction Addiction
This is one of those times when I’m actually glad I went into the book relatively cold – I had just barely perused some reviews of the book well before I read it and didn’t read the blurb right before I started reading. So, I had NO idea what was going to happen, and I appreciated that. Having said that, in order to review the book, I have to at least mention details that were in the blurb, so if you’re planning on reading this one soon and like to be surprised, you might want to just skim my bullet points and skip right to my final thoughts!
What Fed My Addiction:
Love or not?
I loved that this was one of those books where you truly weren’t sure whether the love interest was guilty or not. When Lea’s family is killed, all signs point to her boyfriend having betrayed her, but there’s some definite doubt woven in as well. Is it a coincidence? If not, did Val willingly betray Lea or was it all some sort of mistake? Was he being used or was he an actual participant in the betrayal? I loved these kind of questions and was actually pretty thrilled with the conclusions.
Lea.
In general, I was a big fan of Lea and empathized with her and the really horrible situation she was in. My connection to the characters in this book is definitely what kept me turning the pages. Lea had some shortcomings for sure (for a master assassin, she kind of made a lot of rookie mistakes), but I connected with her so I was willing to forgive when she did something a little dumb. For me, this is the sign of a skilled author because I didn’t always agree with Lea’s actions or even her motives, but Ahiers still had me wrapped up in her enough that I wanted to see her succeed.
The romance.
I actually don’t want to say much about this at all except that I was a huge fan of where the romance went.
What Left Me Wanting More:
Questionable morality.
Okay, the one thing that really kind of marred this book for me was the lack of logic behind the moral code. Lea and her family were part of an assassin family – as far as I could tell, anyone was allowed to pay for their services and have someone killed. It’s not like they were only killing really horrible people who definitely deserved it. I mean, the implication was that only people who had done something really wrong would end up being targeted, but there were no rules around this or true limits beyond the fear of retribution. The implication was that this was okay because the assassinations were worship to their god, but I didn’t see how that made it all that much better. It just made me think not as highly of their god. THEN when Lea’s family is killed it’s SO horrible – because somehow it’s not done in honor of their god but out of greed. But I just didn’t see how the other deaths that were bought couldn’t be done out of greed too, so I felt like it was a bit hypocritical to complain about it. (By the way, this was addressed in the book, but the explanation didn’t make enough sense to me to assuage my misgivings.) Still, I did just kind of let this go for the most part and told myself that this was a part of their religion I just couldn’t understand, and I went with it. If I’d dwelled on it too much, it probably would have bothered me a lot more.
So, if you can look beyond the somewhat conflicting moral messages in this book and just enjoy the ride, then you’ll be very pleased. I appreciated the intriguing society that Ahiers created (even when I wasn’t sure I agreed with all its rules) and I was strongly connected to the characters. Overall, I give this one 4/5 stars.
***Disclosure: I received this book from the publisher via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review. No other compensation was given and all opinions are my own.***
This is one of those times when I’m actually glad I went into the book relatively cold – I had just barely perused some reviews of the book well before I read it and didn’t read the blurb right before I started reading. So, I had NO idea what was going to happen, and I appreciated that. Having said that, in order to review the book, I have to at least mention details that were in the blurb, so if you’re planning on reading this one soon and like to be surprised, you might want to just skim my bullet points and skip right to my final thoughts!
What Fed My Addiction:
Love or not?
I loved that this was one of those books where you truly weren’t sure whether the love interest was guilty or not. When Lea’s family is killed, all signs point to her boyfriend having betrayed her, but there’s some definite doubt woven in as well. Is it a coincidence? If not, did Val willingly betray Lea or was it all some sort of mistake? Was he being used or was he an actual participant in the betrayal? I loved these kind of questions and was actually pretty thrilled with the conclusions.
Lea.
In general, I was a big fan of Lea and empathized with her and the really horrible situation she was in. My connection to the characters in this book is definitely what kept me turning the pages. Lea had some shortcomings for sure (for a master assassin, she kind of made a lot of rookie mistakes), but I connected with her so I was willing to forgive when she did something a little dumb. For me, this is the sign of a skilled author because I didn’t always agree with Lea’s actions or even her motives, but Ahiers still had me wrapped up in her enough that I wanted to see her succeed.
The romance.
I actually don’t want to say much about this at all except that I was a huge fan of where the romance went.
What Left Me Wanting More:
Questionable morality.
Okay, the one thing that really kind of marred this book for me was the lack of logic behind the moral code. Lea and her family were part of an assassin family – as far as I could tell, anyone was allowed to pay for their services and have someone killed. It’s not like they were only killing really horrible people who definitely deserved it. I mean, the implication was that only people who had done something really wrong would end up being targeted, but there were no rules around this or true limits beyond the fear of retribution. The implication was that this was okay because the assassinations were worship to their god, but I didn’t see how that made it all that much better. It just made me think not as highly of their god. THEN when Lea’s family is killed it’s SO horrible – because somehow it’s not done in honor of their god but out of greed. But I just didn’t see how the other deaths that were bought couldn’t be done out of greed too, so I felt like it was a bit hypocritical to complain about it. (By the way, this was addressed in the book, but the explanation didn’t make enough sense to me to assuage my misgivings.) Still, I did just kind of let this go for the most part and told myself that this was a part of their religion I just couldn’t understand, and I went with it. If I’d dwelled on it too much, it probably would have bothered me a lot more.
So, if you can look beyond the somewhat conflicting moral messages in this book and just enjoy the ride, then you’ll be very pleased. I appreciated the intriguing society that Ahiers created (even when I wasn’t sure I agreed with all its rules) and I was strongly connected to the characters. Overall, I give this one 4/5 stars.
***Disclosure: I received this book from the publisher via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review. No other compensation was given and all opinions are my own.***
livinliterary's review against another edition
3.0
It’s a cool premise, but the execution doesn’t live up to it.
theowlerybooks's review against another edition
4.0
I am a sucker for a beautifully thought out religious system!!