Reviews - The High Mountain Court

2.18k reviews for:

The High Mountain Court

A. K. Mulford

3.69 AVERAGE

savage_book_review's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous emotional hopeful mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

Remy has been on the run for over a decade, hiding from a King out for red witch blood. A chance encounter leads to the chance to rebuild her lost home, find her lost family and rediscover herself in this fantasy fae tale.

As the title and description would suggest, this is a story that borrows heavily from the ACOTAR/TOG playbook. However, that isn't necessarily a bad thing. There is enough originality to keep things fresh and interesting, and yet a lot of the exposition you'd expect from the first book in a series is missing because, well, if you're reading it then chances are you already understand the basics of fae biology, lore and power, so why go over it again?! It allows the story to get going immediately - you're pulled into the action very quickly and with little preamble.

This continues throughout the narrative; a lot of the time the band of characters are trekking through woods or otherwise travelling, and so the author just allows there to be time jumps between chapters. It's just slipped into the prose so you do have to concentrate a little, otherwise things move very quickly indeed, but by doing this she has managed to keep the pace of the story going and effectively kept out any surplus that would weigh the story down. That being said, it does have a bitbof a negative impact on the relationship development between the characters - even with the time jump hints, in places everything feels like it's progressing just a bit too quickly. A moment to breathe every so often might just have given the story a bit more in the way of build up.

The characters as a group really do band together in your mind; they very much fulfil the 'found family' trope and it's easy and enjoyable to fall into their camaraderie and bonds. The downside is that, for the most part, the strength of each individual secondary character is somewhat lost - I would hope they will get their time to shine in later books in the series, but for now I'm left wanting more. The two main characters, Remy and Hale, are more clearly defined and obviously are given more pages to spread their wings (unfortunately not literally, as far as I can tell!), but even then they don't quite feel fully formed yet. However, they are absolutely engaging and, no matter how predictable, it's still great to watch their relationship change.

Everything is set out well so you can envisage the author's imagined world and how it works, but at the same time the worldbuilding isn't quite up to Maas standards. I can't really visualise a lot of the places the author talks about - in many cases I am just recycling images from ACOTAR or TOG to fill in the gaps. That being said, when the places have an emotional connection with the characters it becomes much easier - it feel like the author has a stronger grasp on these images and might even be describing versions of places with meaning to her.

You go into this book knowing pretty much exactly what you're going to get, and yet the author still manages to throw in a couple of cheeky little twists to keep you guessing. The only disappointment is that on more than one occasion she chooses to 'resolve' a twist pretty much instantly, so again there's little chance for proper tension to build. I admit it's refreshing to not have a misunderstanding suck upnall the air for multiple chapters, but in this case it could have used a little stretching out to make us as readers squirm a bit!

Overall, quite an enjoyable read and I'm intrigued to see where the series goes from here.