Reviews with content warning for Self harm - La guaritrice di Zalindov

This book somehow felt both slow and rushed. While I expected it to be uncomfortable, with most of the book taking place within an unregulated prison environment, the brutality felt poorly fleshed out. There is constant reference to physical, sexual and mental abuse suffered by the prisoners at the hands of the guards, but it never goes anywhere. Kiva’s internal monologue often refers to how at any time there are people who can take advantage of her, and yet it felt shallow and unbelievable.

While the aim it to increase the drama of the big reveal at the end, I found Kiva hard to root for when her motivations seemed so all over the place. She takes on the horrific ordeal of the Rebel Queen’s sentence and punishment, yet maintains throughout that she is only mildly sympathetic to the rebel’s cause – instead driven by her oath as a healer. When in the very last pages, it was revealed that there was much more to it than that, I found it hard to believe that the cool, manipulative Kiva who had just been revealed was the same person as the hopelessly naive one who still believed after a decade that her family were on the way to recuse her, and who broke all her rules about forming relationships because Jaren had a pretty face.

Unfortunately, I can see fairly obviously where the next two books are going, and am not invested enough in the characters to watch it play out. Despite this being a pretty quick, easy read, that ultimately did no harm, it reminds me of all the things I didn’t like about ACOTR, and so I won’t be bothering with the rest of it.

Content Warnings

readabilitea's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious medium-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

1.0

My tolerance for basic writing and plot predictability is pretty high, but I found it difficult to get through this one and in the end resulted to skimming just the speech.

The primary problem for me was how unnecessarily repetitive the writing was. I felt like I was being treated as stupid and as if my hand needed holding all the time, as though without the constant recapping, the stating the obvious, and the incessant reminders of "Don't let her die. We are coming." I would have forgot everything I had read up until that point.

I also felt this handholding and the telling rather showing aspect of the writing was a problem when it came to some of the sensitive issues handled in the book.

when Kiva reveals her self-harm to Jaren, and when he reveals his mother's addiction to Kiva, what followed was a lecture encompassing the beginning, middle, and end of a trauma storyline and it left me feeling really icky, as if the author wasn't actually engaging with the topic but using the trauma to add some history to her characters, justified by ending on a spelling out of what to do should you ever encounter these issues in real life.

This book is full of YA fantasy tropes and I see why people like it, after all that's exactly why I picked it up: I wanted an easy, action-packed read that would be difficult to put down. Ultimately though this backfired because I was left with so many questions that regularly took me out of the reading experience. If the prison is regularly overpopulated, why would you just accept kids coming in with the parents? The guards clearly don't mind being cruel so why would you not just forcefully separate children and their arrested parents before getting to the prison? Why are the trials impossible without magic and not just very very difficult?

How did Kiva just forget that a stomach bug was what caused her father's death?

If we are supposed to believe throughout Kiva is rigid about sticking to her healer code, why does she at one point worsen a guard's symptoms rather than just giving him a less effective remedy?

A slightly more minor point of annoyance was that the pacing was off. It starts off promisingly but slumps majorly in the middle section, which is even more baffling considering the whole appeal of a Trial format is the suspense and danger that propels a story forward. Instead of this, we spend pages upon pages conducting pointless scientific experiments?? And then it picks up at again towards the ending, finishing on a lot of drama and 'revelations' which felt contrived and fell flat.

Overall, I was pretty disappointed in this book and even the desire for plot resolution isn't enough to make me want to read the rest of the series.

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helliepad's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

There was a point in the middle of this that I just wanted to put the book down bc it started getting miserable and I totally forgot this had magic halfway through. I love the story and even though I suspected that Kiva was

from the Corentine line

from the start, the emotional impact of

her mother the Rebel Queen DYING under her care

was insane to me and it still hit. Two more books is too long for me though idk if I'll finish the series. Though the story is really good and I love

secret identity

stories so that was nice.

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guessgreenleaf's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

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czoltak's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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lordfroggington's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

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

4.25

Content Warnings

lidiae's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional slow-paced

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

2.5

My main issue with this book is just pacing, it was so slow at times and it feels like we’re learning nothing only for it to all be revealed at the end in a rush. I also felt like every character was flat and not very well developed. I’m not sure I’ll pick up the rest of the series

but the reveal at the end may have changed my mind uggh

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