Reviews with content warning for War - All the Stars and Teeth

This was a decent fantasy romance book. I didn’t absolutely love it, but I will probably read the sequel.
The world building was decent, though the explanation of soul magic was a bit confusing and hard to follow. There was some info-dumping at the beginning which always turns me off a bit, but it wasn’t unforgivable.
I thought the plot was somewhat rushed, and I especially thought the romance was built up too quickly and didn’t feel real to me. I like when the author makes me work for it haha
I was disappointed that mermaids weren’t more involved in the plot.

In one sentence, I would say the book has a similar vibe to a Court of Thorns and Roses, but not as good.

Spice level: 🌶🌶/5

Specific to the audiobook:
I want to preface this by saying that I absolutely love audiobooks, so a negative review is rare from me. Unfortunately, I strongly disliked the narration of this book and would recommend skipping the audiobook. The narrator seemed too focused on creating different voices for each character, and ended up making most of them sounds incredibly annoying…I also noticed some weird editing where it was obvious that different takes had been spliced together. Finally, the narrator’s constant pronunciation of silent G’s grated my nerves the entire book. (“ding-Guh-y”, “sing-Guh-ing”, etc).

Content Warnings

rachrreads's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny inspiring lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

Content Warnings

chattycali's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging inspiring slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I expected a lot from this book but it fell a bit flat for me. Took me 150 pages to get into it and yes, the epic battle scene at the end was awesome, but the lack of explanation from the last page to the epilogue bothers me. Will not be getting the second book but a decent enough read.

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jupanuma's review against another edition

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adventurous dark medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

I really liked this book until the very end. I liked how different islands? countries? I don't know, locations had their own type of magic. I liked how even with the general umbrella magic each location had, you got to meet people who either trained their magic to be different from others, or for some reason they were just born with stronger magic. I liked the world-building of, you can't train in any other type of magic except the magic from your home town.

I did find it odd the the "royal family" for some reason had their own magic but the aunt and cousin somehow learned magic from a different place before learning the "family" magic. Like okay, the cousin somehow unlocked using different magic at the age of 5, but the aunt? She didn't learn magic until right before the main character's debut? What? Did you go what 40+ years before learning magic? Why did the king (the father of the main character) learn the family magic but you didn't? That doesn't make sense. What if your heir died before taking over and having a child, were you just going to go "Oh well? I have to quickly train my daughter"? I mean whatever, not a huge deal-breaker, but I did find it super strange.

I did find the main character kind of annoying though. She kept going on about having to be the best ruler. Not try to good for the people, or do as much as she could, no she has to be the BEST. Which I don't know where that mindset came from, because it never seemed like her parents were pushing her to be the best, just "do your best". Either way, it was annoying and more often than not felt like just an excuse to be kind of rude and just say "it's because I have to be perfect that I can't do anything wrong." And the whole

argument she and her fiance have didn't change how either of them acted.

Like don't get me wrong I did like that part, but nothing really changed. I also didn't like how she kept saying stuff like <spiler>"I don't need or what a man in my life to help rule." and then starts having feelings for the pirate. Like I understand feeling change, but you didn't give your fiance a chance, why should I care about this other character.

Now why I didn't like how it ended.

Most of what I didn't like was how she spent the whole time falling in love, or at least starting to have feelings, for the pirate, but what she finds out that her soul is now tied to his, she all like "Oh how could I know if I like him for him or if it's just because my soul is tied to yours." Like really? Are you that stupid? You have been having feelings for him as soon as you stepped on his ship, do not tell me that you don't know if what you are feeling is real or not, because you didn't get your souls tied until you meet up with the bad guy.

And I know there is a 2nd volume to this series, but I felt like you can leave it here and it was a complete story. Nothing really opened ended to be like I NEED to read the next volume. It ended with her

ruling and saying she "what to fix what her father failed at" and to somehow find a way to break the curse on her and the pirate. But it made it sound like they are goals to be accomplished instead of "I'm actively working on there right now so you need to read the 2nd volume to know what is going to happen."

So I don't know if I will read the next book, because like I said this felt like a complete story.

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