Reviews

It’s good, but rather derivative of the Hunger Games, especially the stage where they’re all in alternating concentric circles of water and land, and the part where those circles start to spin. Out of the three books that I’ve read so far, this is the least original. Also, despite the massacres and widespread deaths, the AG games don’t come across as deadly as the first two books made them out to be. Some of the main antagonists even manage to kill themselves by accident! This last smacks of lazy storytelling.
Hoping the fourth and last book is better.

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2.0

I think I finally get it. Really. Because I keep reading these books and shaking my head, but I continue reading anyway. It's the story. The story compels me to read, but the execution is lacking. The prose isn't very well written--a lot of tell and not show, an overuse of exclamation points (you really, REALLY, do not need that many exclamations points...), so on and so forth. It could be tighter, it could be cleaner, it could be prettier. BUT the story the author is trying to tell is solid. It meanders a bit, yes. It focuses on unimportant things at times. However, the ideas introduced and what the author tries to implement is decent.

There are still downsides. So many downsides. I nearly put down the book after slogging through the beginning. Aeson seemed a different person, what with having emotions and all. You get an answer for the surprise you receive in the last book and it's... not a very good answer because you would think Aeson would manage to get some sort of information across to Gwen. That is not something you spring on someone without talking, good reason or not. I was actually happy with the relationship and how it was finally progressing, but after a while what I was reading was stagnant. Once the Atlantis Grail started and Gwen had a goal things started picking up again.

The Grail games are fun, if ridiculous. Again, the attention paid to different stages of the games is very uneven, with the most centered on the first stage. After that the next few roll around relatively quickly and with strangely not as much conflict as the first stage. There's a lot of sitting around and waiting. Gwen survives by severally really lucky factors (in fact, too lucky, but handwave) and a bunch of people who gather under her because... well, for some reason. The end of the book was really abrupt. It was a cliffhanger, yes, but it was more like the author stopped the book because they couldn't find a decent place to end it and it was getting too long.

They're entertaining books, even if they're not well written. Lots of problems, but interesting ideas to help make up for it. 2 stars.