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4.01 AVERAGE
4.01 AVERAGE
adventurous
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Meh. Incoherent and underdeveloped storyline. Unnecessary sections. I only finished it because I wondered how it would be pulled together.
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
This was four stars for a good chunk of the way through, but alas! the ending didn't really work for me. I wish we'd known more about how the magic system works, but i guess as Agnieszka never seems motivated to figure out how it works beyond what feels right in her heart it makes sense that we would also be kept in the dark. SO much plot -- several books' worth, it felt like. It became a running joke with my buddy read that we would both check in and guess various plot developments that might take place within the narrative as we saw it, and then Novik would up and change the setting or tone entirely on us and make all our predictions useless. The princess has burst out of the tower! We're going to court! We're journeying intrepidly thru the forest! We're fleeing the court! Ok ok ok. This worked in that it was super pacy, but I guess esp towards the end felt like too much being crammed into not enough space... Also SORRY i wish there had been MORE ROMANCE. I'm a sap at heart..... there's a great tree queen joke there but i don't know what it is. I wish Sarkan's baggage had been more onscreen and that he had worked through it in front of us rather than disappearing from the valley and then reappearing in the epilogue. What changed his mind ??? Also also final note that I was expecting Baba Jaga to have more of a role in this if not in a cameo then in like an educational fashion.... Agnieszka tells a little girl at the end to come find her later with the implication that she'll teach her but like. With all love in my heart. Agnieszka seems like she would be a shit teacher. She does not know what pedagogy is
Imagine, if you will, a montage scene. They happen in books, in movies, overall I think they're pretty cool and I like them. Let's use Rocky as an example. Rocky is a boxer who sucks in the beginning of the movie and subsequently learns how to fight better through an energizing and musically amazing montage of him practicing. At the end of the movie you believe that he has grown as a fighter because you have seen all of the hard work he put into it, and you feel happy because you got to grow and learn with him. (PS I haven't seen Rocky).
Now, if this book were made into Rocky, this is how it would go. Rocky is the untrained fighter in the beginning of the movie and gets picked to be trained. The montage scene comes up, only instead of him running up and down the steps and punching meat and slowly growing more confident and powerful, you see Rocky spitefully taking a few steps up a stairway and gently tapping the hanging meat, all the while complaining about how he hates doing all of this. Then comes the big fight at the end, and despite only running up two steps and gently caressing some meat Rocky PUNCHES THE SHIT out of the bad guy. Then another bad guy comes up even stronger and Rocky PUNCHES THE BEJEESUS out of him too. Then other boxers come and try to help Rocky fight an even bigger threat, boxers who have trained for hundreds of years to fight this huge enemy, and they get their asses kicked and then Rocky saves everyone and, you guessed it, punches the shit out of the main evil as icing on top of the cake.
So I GUESS what I want to say is that Arniezska (didn't even double check the spelling on that one, but trust me it was just as incomprehensible) is a total Mary Sue and this book is lame despite me finishing it in one day. The beginning had potential and as everything crumbled around me I had some sort of masochistic urge to see where the ruins would lay. Also, the Dragon was super lame and I hated him. Hey, how about if you're going to make this guy a potential love interest, maybe not have him call the main character an idiot 300 times in the first twenty pages? I found his absolute disdain of Arnie in the beginning--hell, throughout the entire book--a little hard to get over, even though I hated her just as much. Which is a pretty tough thing to accomplish, I think.
Now, if this book were made into Rocky, this is how it would go. Rocky is the untrained fighter in the beginning of the movie and gets picked to be trained. The montage scene comes up, only instead of him running up and down the steps and punching meat and slowly growing more confident and powerful, you see Rocky spitefully taking a few steps up a stairway and gently tapping the hanging meat, all the while complaining about how he hates doing all of this. Then comes the big fight at the end, and despite only running up two steps and gently caressing some meat Rocky PUNCHES THE SHIT out of the bad guy. Then another bad guy comes up even stronger and Rocky PUNCHES THE BEJEESUS out of him too. Then other boxers come and try to help Rocky fight an even bigger threat, boxers who have trained for hundreds of years to fight this huge enemy, and they get their asses kicked and then Rocky saves everyone and, you guessed it, punches the shit out of the main evil as icing on top of the cake.
So I GUESS what I want to say is that Arniezska (didn't even double check the spelling on that one, but trust me it was just as incomprehensible) is a total Mary Sue and this book is lame despite me finishing it in one day. The beginning had potential and as everything crumbled around me I had some sort of masochistic urge to see where the ruins would lay. Also, the Dragon was super lame and I hated him. Hey, how about if you're going to make this guy a potential love interest, maybe not have him call the main character an idiot 300 times in the first twenty pages? I found his absolute disdain of Arnie in the beginning--hell, throughout the entire book--a little hard to get over, even though I hated her just as much. Which is a pretty tough thing to accomplish, I think.
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Let's be honest; I read this book because Karen Marie Moning read it and gave it five stars. Enough said.
However, my conviction that if KMM loved it, I would too, soon vanished and was replaced with doubt, accompanied by a constant frown while reading it.
So generally I think this book had a lot of great ideas it's just always not quite enough...
Take Agnieszka. She's the typical YA heroine. She's super special and magical but she doesn't know it yet. She gets picked by the super powerful Dragon and she just doesn't understand why... Sadly, this kind of 'why me? I'm not special.... but then I turn out to be super-duper special'-tale is done to death, unoriginal and lacked a certain it-factor this time around.
There is also the issue of her constantly walking around with dirty clothes. I assume her habit of spilling food on herself should endear Agnieszka to the reader but really, it was overdone. Frankly, I felt as if Agnieszka was too stupid to hold a spoon. It wasn't endearing, it was stupid.
But I think Novik's biggest issue is that she didn't manage to create engaging characters. The entire time while reading this, I felt detached from the characters. Even though it was told in first person narrative I felt distanced and cold towards Agnieszka and the Dragon and wasn't rooting for either of them.
Then there is the whole issue of the Dragon, who's not really a dragon but a magician and he lives in a tower to reign over a small village..... Weird. I guess Novik tried to portray an arrogant, powerful and yet loveable character à la Jericho Barrons but to me it felt like she only managed in creating an arrogant ass...
I also don't understand why he is so feared and every girl is shaking in her boots when he comes to select one. So, the girls who have come back assure them that he doesn't sleep with them, doesn't mistreat them. They return after ten years with more money than they could ever dream of having and are well-educated with a desire to leave this little village and discover the world and become scholars. What's so bad about that? Why does everyone fear the guy then? I'd be volunteering to go and live in that tower...
And what's up with that magic? So all you have to do is say a foreign sounding word and you're yielding magic? Really, that's it? And you want the spell to be less powerful you just mumble the word or slur the ending? Way to underwhelm me!
So in the end, the book wasn't bad, but it wasn't captivating either...
However, my conviction that if KMM loved it, I would too, soon vanished and was replaced with doubt, accompanied by a constant frown while reading it.
So generally I think this book had a lot of great ideas it's just always not quite enough...
Take Agnieszka. She's the typical YA heroine. She's super special and magical but she doesn't know it yet. She gets picked by the super powerful Dragon and she just doesn't understand why... Sadly, this kind of 'why me? I'm not special.... but then I turn out to be super-duper special'-tale is done to death, unoriginal and lacked a certain it-factor this time around.
There is also the issue of her constantly walking around with dirty clothes. I assume her habit of spilling food on herself should endear Agnieszka to the reader but really, it was overdone. Frankly, I felt as if Agnieszka was too stupid to hold a spoon. It wasn't endearing, it was stupid.
But I think Novik's biggest issue is that she didn't manage to create engaging characters. The entire time while reading this, I felt detached from the characters. Even though it was told in first person narrative I felt distanced and cold towards Agnieszka and the Dragon and wasn't rooting for either of them.
Then there is the whole issue of the Dragon, who's not really a dragon but a magician and he lives in a tower to reign over a small village..... Weird. I guess Novik tried to portray an arrogant, powerful and yet loveable character à la Jericho Barrons but to me it felt like she only managed in creating an arrogant ass...
I also don't understand why he is so feared and every girl is shaking in her boots when he comes to select one. So, the girls who have come back assure them that he doesn't sleep with them, doesn't mistreat them. They return after ten years with more money than they could ever dream of having and are well-educated with a desire to leave this little village and discover the world and become scholars. What's so bad about that? Why does everyone fear the guy then? I'd be volunteering to go and live in that tower...
And what's up with that magic? So all you have to do is say a foreign sounding word and you're yielding magic? Really, that's it? And you want the spell to be less powerful you just mumble the word or slur the ending? Way to underwhelm me!
So in the end, the book wasn't bad, but it wasn't captivating either...
adventurous
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes