Reviews

I did not like Juniper and thorn, so I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this! The plotting, world building and writing really drew me in.
My own complaint, was this felt very much like a YA book and I was expecting more of an adult feel. But please give me all the adult fairy tale books

sanjubee's review against another edition

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5.0

I really admire the worldbuilding of this book. Thoroughly entertaining from start to finish.

erica_cronje's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-paced

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

2.5

I'm honestly not even sure where to start this review. While i wasn't sure what to expect from this novel, I expected better than this and yes, i do understand that this is the author's debut novel so things are likely to be a little rough around the edges and clearly her craft does improved (see a Study in Drowning), however, i still feel as though certain things could have such a better execution and i do blame the editors as much as i do the author, maybe even more than the author. Anyway, let's get into it.

Writing Style - the writing is honestly the best part of the book.Ava Reid has a very flowing, easy-to-read writing style, embellished with some beautiful, lyric and descriptive lines. Most of my annotations are simply to take note on the beautiful writing, to be able to look back on the best parts of the book

. . .it looks like the spider web of some giant creature, something the woods might cough up.

Beneath our feet, the ground is dusted with a faint layer of early forst, the black earth still bleeding through.

My words are dulled arrows;they bounce off her and land in the snow

The writing does fall off around the 75% mark though, with multiple phrases and ideas repeated within 2 pages of each other, but it becomes better towards to end of the book.

The Characters - (trying to keep this as short as possible) they were underdeveloped. All of them. As simple as that. They all had so much potential and we got glimpses of what could have been, and had it been more prevalent, it would've enhanced the entire book.

Nandor died and become immortal and in doing so became evil - explore how those around him planted these ideas in his head, how the super religious figures in his life shaped him into what he became.
But i mostly want to focus on Evike since she is our main character. She was too annoying, she kept thinking about sex (in the past or present) in life threatening situations which was just frustrating to read, just. . . time and place Evike. I also think her 'magic arc' was handled a bit rough. She makes such a show about how empty she feels when she loses her magic. but she barely used it! If we had seen just how dependant she had become on her magic, even in the short few weeks she had it, that loss would have felt as tremendous as she made it out to be. I also would have liked to see her struggle more with the way she got her powers in the first place, since she calls the Woodsman barbaric for doing the exact same thing. I would have appreciated more reflection in general on her part - like struggling with her identity as a Wolf girl (since she has magic now) and as a Yehuli daughter.

The Religious Theme - this had so much potential! There was so much potential to explore both religions and how the two main characters learn to see the, for lack of a better word, 'faults' in their religion and to see the 'rights' in the others. But no, one religion is made out to be the 'better' of the two throughout the entire novel,

even though Evike gets her magic through a method that the Woodsmen are judged so harshly for by Evike!

This book had the opportunity to make such an interesting commentary on real life problems and conflicts through different religions and it absolutely fails in making any sort of comment or even attempt of a comment. I am just severely disappointed with how the theme was handled across the book, especially since it draws on real life mythology and history.

Pacing and Plot - it was all over the place to be honest, both figuratively and literally. It felt as though the author could not decide which of her five ideas she wanted to use as her main plot, so decided to use all of them, and the book is worse off for it. It needed to be simplified a lot and edited to be more cohesive. There is also too much travel for, honestly no purpose and it gets tiring to read since we have already been down this road (literally in some cases). If we look on the map how they travel and how often, it would look like a toddler was given a crayon and scribbled all over the map. It was especially frustrating since 90% of the traveling ends in failure which contributes even more to the frustrations since it was all for nothing, like there was essentially no point, for the characters or the plot.
This also affected the tension on this book to feel like a rollercoaster ride, up and down and up and down and the you suddenly just stop. Certain scenes in certain locations made it feel as though the entire 'main' plot and growing tension come to a screeching halt, for, yet again, no reason. Thi was also enhanced by the fact that there were about 4 side plots trying to go on at the same time. It just made for an all over confusing read with too many characters who were given their own storyline and development but just ended in a lot of confusion and unnecessary scenes. So much so i can't even tell you which plot was supposed to be the main plot, since it seems to change every five chapters.
There was also a lot of grusome moments that felts very unnecessary, like gore fore gore's sake and no other reason.

In conclusion, this was a very messy and confusing book to read with multiple frustrating factors that led to a very unsatisfactory read