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mairi99's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
Graphic: Addiction, Gun violence, Injury/Injury detail, Violence, and Murder
Moderate: Alcoholism, Blood, Alcohol, Death, and Drug use
Minor: Fire/Fire injury and Vomit
riflelizards's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
4.5
Graphic: Murder, Classism, Death of parent, Violence, Alcohol, Grief, and Abandonment
Moderate: Drug use, Fire/Fire injury, Injury/Injury detail, and Blood
Minor: Addiction, War, Torture, and Pedophilia
ellie_gonzalez's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Graphic: Death of parent, Murder, and Physical abuse
Moderate: Pedophilia, Fire/Fire injury, and Addiction
3mmers's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
Ace of Shades opens as Enne Salta, débutante and ballerina from the idyllic and boring suburbs, steps off the boat into the notorious City of Sin, New Reynes after the disappearance of her mysterious political writer mother. Enne’s only lead is teen card shark Levi Glaisyer. Unfortunately, Levi is less help than she expected. He’s in over his head trying to bail himself out of the bottom of a pyramid scheme and has never heard of her mother. But when Enne offers him a lifesaving amount of money he agrees to help her. Their search drags Enne into the city’s notoriously sordid gambling district and its notoriously bloody past as she starts to realize just how many dangerous secrets her mother was hiding from her. Levi’s grasp on his failing scheme weakens and he learns just how little power he has among the new royalty of New Reynes’ casinos. All threads point towards the bloody deaths of the aristocracy of the old regime orchestrated by the mysterious and deadly Shadow Game. The deck is stacked against them and Levi and Enne will have to bet it all for a chance at survival. But at the end of the day the house will always win.
As I struggled to summarize the plot it became very clear that Ace of Shades' sequence of events is weak. While I did avoid some plot beats to preserve a few of the better reveals, mostly I had trouble deciding what to include because individual events are not well unified into a single story. Scenes work fine in isolation in the context of the story I kept stopping to ask ‘wait, why is this important?’ For example, most plot threads will end with the characters going to bed and agreeing to meet up the next day, rather than taking the next step of the investigation. While it may be more realistic, it’s also a symptom that the leads not well connected. Rather than one leading (lol) into another, the protagonists pursue each clue to its disappointing conclusion, and then have to wait around for a new one to appear. It’s tough to follow how one event leads to the next, or how the actions of the protagonists change the events of the novel. While Ace of Shades is nominally a mystery, it is full of unrelated side arcs. As an example,
To be honest the overarching plot was not what I thought about the most while I was reading. It was the sort of thing that only really bothered me in retrospect. In the moment, the most compromised part of the experience was the worldbuilding. It is a land of contrasts, some fascinatingly good ideas and some so mindblowingly out of place I almost noped out of the entire series. First, the good. I did like the general concept of a setting rife with general hedonism: gambling, debauchery, drugs and alcohol, rather than the proliferation of murder in other gritty settings. There’s a lot of novelty to fantasy Las Vegas and the best character is the one most closely related to that concept (
The pursuit of cool details without much thought into how they would work in service of the whole is what led to my dissatisfaction with the worldbuilding. Ace of Shades has a major issue with tonal inconsistency. It ping pongs between goofy crap and then elements so dark that I genuinely don’t know whether the author realized it. The most egregious example is Jack’s backstory. Jack is Levi’s sidekick and his more earnest and direct counterpart. He’s not particularly deep, except that his backstory is that
The tone is annoying, but the magic system is genuinely bad. It is incredibly arbitrary, in other words, the magic does not have an internal logic or set of rules that govern its power and limitations. ATLA is a very logical magic system, Harry Potter is arbitrary. Arbitrary magic systems allow the author a lot of freedom to create powers that are cool and useful but at the risk of seeming overpowered, artificial, or even goofy. Ace of Shades’ magic feels extremely artificial throughout due to the massive power differences between different characters. The magic in this world ranges from barely supernatural (some people are unusually fast or strong but these powers do not really feel like they exceed the abilities of professional athletes) to essentially free mind control. The more powerful supernatural abilities have limitations that look like they’re taken directly from TTRPGs and never edited. For example,
To summarize, Ace of Shades is essentially fine. It’s a good book tackling an underutilized setting and concept, but it fails to use any of the new concepts it brings to the table, making it feel more formulaic than it should. While its more fundamental components were okay, the novel lost me with its frustrating, poorly thought out, and distracting details. Here’s hoping the sequel brings it back around.
Moderate: Injury/Injury detail and Pedophilia
Minor: Drug abuse, Addiction, and Sexual assault
sarah_cameron's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Moderate: Alcohol, Blood, Death of parent, Gore, Gun violence, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Pedophilia, and Violence
Minor: Addiction, Bullying, Child death, Classism, Cursing, Drug use, Fire/Fire injury, Grief, Pregnancy, Rape, Sexual assault, Slavery, and Vomit
larainsidebooks's review
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
However, this wasn't the case at the beginning. I will blame that on me having big breaks between starting this book and actually comitting to reading it regularly and my uni obligations getting in the way of giving this book the proper attention it deserves. As I was getting closer to the ending, my anticipation rose and I ended up being glued to the screen until the very end!
We have two main characters, both with their own motives. At the beginning, it seems like they are complete opposites: Enne, a pretty young girl, straight out of a presitge finishing school and Levi, a gang leader trying to build his empire. They both fail at their respective missions, but they pick themselves up each time and continue fighting. I especially loved Enne's development. Levi and Enne have to work together and at first they clash, but they learn to rely on eachother. Which may or may not lead to some feelings. Which brings me to THE TENSION. I'm so happy we have dual POV because there is no doubt about their feelings. They both like the other, but are doing absolutely nothing about it (maybe not nothing at all, but still I need more!).Their banter was perfect and I loved all of their scenes together. I appreciated the slow buildup, because the entire books spans only 8-10 days and it's expected that they wouldn't get together in the first book out of the three. I'm so excited to see what's in store for them in the sequel! Also, one point I would like to add is that Levi is bisexual and Enne's mother dresses fluidly, so there's some representation if you are looking for that.
I also enjoyed the secondary characters very much. I already see warming up to Jac even more in the second book and I love his friendship with Levi. I also feel that Lola will become a much bigger part of the story.
It is around the halfway point that a big reveal happens, but I didn't get my full attention. It didn't feel grounded in logic, because there weren't that many reasons why our MC would even pursue getting to the bottom of that mystery. I mean, there were two main ones, but it felt like that sort of reveal was meant to happen later in the book because it feels it didn't make any sort of difference at the middle except the fact that we gained a new secondary character.
I also struggled to understand what were everyone's talents at the beginning of the book. The magic system of this book is really interesting and unique. Basically, everyone has two talents: one blood talent (which is stronger) and one split talent (the weaker one), both inherited from your parents. You also share your main last name with the parent that you got your blood talent from. Example: Enne Abacus Salta - her main (blood) talent is dancing and that's why she is usually just called Enne Salta, while counting is her second (split) talent. There are so many different talents. Strenght, healing, seeing auras, fire, acrobatics, counting, being able to see other people's talents (blood gazers), protecting someone.. I also really liked that the strenghts of the the same talents were different depending on it being your blood talent or split talent (Jac's split talent is healing, but since it's his weaker one, he feels the pain of the wound he heals).
The volt/orb system was also a mystery to me, because I couldn't for the life of me figure out the difference between orb makers and the power that the Mizers apparently had, which was making volts (I'm still not quite sure).
This brings me to my next point: the history and the setting. The time period/setting feels like late 19/early 20th century and I loved the atmosphere of New Reynes and how it contrasted Bellamy, where Enne is originally from. I also loved that Enne was constantly referring to her guidebook and Levi was teasing her about it. The history of this world is also pretty interesting. New Reynes is a part of the Republic now, but there used to be bunch of kingdoms, but the royals were all killed 18 or so years ago so there's a lot of mysteries about that to uncover. I just wish we got more information about the Mizers and their actual powers, because the only thing I know for sure that they all have purple eyes, but I don't understand all of their powers (do they make volts???). I also don't really understand what the name Mizer actually stands for. All of the royals or just a selected group? Is it a monarchists party or does is include the people that support them? I hope we get more answers in the next book.
I expected the final conflict to happen at the very end of the book, but I didn't expect it to play out the way it did. I honestly thought the roles would be reversed (if you know you know), but I guess that there was more at stake this way. I loved the ending and can't wait to see what the sequel brings!
What it reminded me of: Six of Crows, These Violent Delights, The Gilded Wolves (haven't read it yet, but they both give me a similar vibe), tv show Peaky Blinders
Graphic: Gun violence, Fire/Fire injury, and Death
Moderate: Pedophilia
Minor: Addiction
lemonzest's review
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Graphic: Blood and Violence
Moderate: Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Gun violence, Torture, and Alcoholism
Minor: Addiction and Sexual harassment
readwithria's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
One thing that I don't know if I will ever get over, however, is the use of 'mucking' as a swear word. It took me out of the book every time.
Graphic: Gun violence and Violence
Moderate: Pedophilia, Alcohol, and Death of parent
Minor: Addiction and Police brutality
pitschi's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Graphic: Alcohol, Death, Murder, and Violence
Moderate: Fire/Fire injury, Gun violence, and Sexual harassment
Minor: Addiction, Pedophilia, Vomit, and Drug use
lifegivesyoulemons's review
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.75
Graphic: Violence, Gore, and Gun violence
Moderate: Fire/Fire injury
Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Addiction, Child abuse, Child death, and Rape