Reviews - A Tempest of Tea

7.17k reviews for:

A great concept with amazing vibes! As many others said, it's very reminiscent of Six of Crows. I love the setting and the characters but I feel like we didn't get to know them in much depth.
The story does a lot of telling and not showing and I felt like a lot of information was spoon-fed/given to us too quickly which took a lot of the wonder out.
The middle was a bit slow but the ending started to pick up a bit with some interesting stuff but overall the book leaves a lot to be desired.
I'm intrigued enough to read the sequel as I have a lot of questions/loose threads that I want to see resolved but I'm not super confident that the sequel will fix them.

neleria's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

tjwilliams's review against another edition

3.0

I’m so conflicteddddd about this. It has so much potential but it fell short and I don’t actually know why. For sure there is just too much going on and it detracts from the story as a whole. I think it really needed to be a longer book with more depth.

As much as I adored Arthie and Jin (it’s giving Kaz Brekker and Jesper lite roulette), I have no idea who these characters are, not really, but I sure know how much they hate colonialism lmao. And I am 100% the girlie that loves anti-colonialism but it was like being whacked on the head by it, left, right and centre in this book. And then after that, there was apparently no more space left for character building.

Plus, what was the point of the heist? It was a little confusing actually, and I also didn’t get the sense that it was necessary considering Arthie knew Penn soooo intimately (enough for the ending to hurt her)? I don’t understand why the big reveal needed to be kept a secret anyway, considering the company she keeps. Also, Flick. Not an interesting character to hitch a ride with at all.

But the prose and the sheer determination has this at a solid 3 for me. I don’t…know…if I want to read the sequel