Reviews - The Last Soldier of Nava

37 reviews for:

The Last Soldier of Nava

Yejin Suh

3.23 AVERAGE

annettebooksofhopeanddreams's review

2.5

adventurous challenging emotional mysterious slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

I have to admit that my main reason to request a review copy through Netgalley was the cover. I loved the atmosphere, I loved how curious it made me. And since Magpie granted me a copy and the release date was getting closer, it was time to dive in.

It's clear that this book and I didn't click. Something about the book just didn't work for me and I can't completely put into words what. I'm gonna give it a try though. The main issue was that I was confused throughout the entire book. I had a hard time understanding the world, the characters and their goals and motivations and the kind of story I was actually reading. I couldn't grasp the direction, I couldn't understand why this story was told.

I think it's the writing that just didn't work for me. Maybe it's because I don't see anything while reading. I just feel. And while reading this book I didn't really feel anything. I also had issues connecting with the characters. Even after finishing the book it still feels like I don't really know them. Everyone is hiding so much, everyone is keeping so many secrets. I don't know much about their desires and wants and their unique personality traits.

Maybe I should have not finished this book at some point, but there was also enough to keep me reading. I liked the concept of the magic. I liked the hidden identity of the heroine of the story. I liked the political banter. At times I didn't understand what was going on, but I kept on hoping that at some moment things would just click and everything I read before that would make sense. However, it didn't happen. Even after finishing the book, I still don't really get what I've been reading.

However, I'm sure a lot of people will like this book a lot better than me! I'm pretty sure that this review says more about me than about the objective quality of the book. If you think you'll like it, give it a go! After all, I did keep on reading, didn't I?

feed_them_books's review

4.0

I was drawn in by the premise of this book being a sapphic fantasy inspired by Korean mythology. I do think at times that the pacing of this book did struggle, especially near the end. I did love the romance in this though, it really helped me stay invested. I would definitely recommend this book to fantasy lovers though, bonus points if they want something queer.

eli_sa's review against another edition

3.75

slow-paced

The story and setting was really enjoyable. I particularly enjoyed the second half of the book.
The first half was quite slow and the writing style unlike anything I've ever read which took me a while to get used to. I much prefer more upfront descriptive writing styles while this left more for the reader to fill the "gaps".
If you like translated fiction writing style then you might enjoy this.

Thank you Harper Voyager for an e-arc.

ailarum's review

2.0

adventurous medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

I am very sad to say that I cannot rate this any higher than a 2 / 5 stars. When I originally came across this book on goodreads and saw «Korean mythology inspired sapphic fantasy», I was sold already. I love stories inspired by real-world mythologies, and having it also be sapphic is nothing short of a dream come true. So, you can imagine my excitement when I saw this book up on Netgalley, requested it, and got approved.

Let’s start with the two selling points that first got me interested in this book; I don’t know anything about Korean mythology, so I won’t comment on that, but I will talk about the sapphic aspect of the book. ‘The Last Soldier of Nava’ is essentially an enemies-to-lovers romance between Shadow, who is also the protagonist and POV character, and Scarlet. Shadow kinda accidentally killed Scarlet’s sister - Scarlet knows it was ‘the soldier’ who killed her sister, but does nit know that the soldier and Shadow are the same person. But even without that knowledge, Scarlet spends the first half of the book hating Shadow.

The issue with this romance storyline, however, is that there is almost 0 indication that any kind of attraction between these two characters exists. I get that with an enemies-to-lovers setup you have to slowly build up that relationship for either end of the trope to be believable. And while the enemies part was fine, the lovers aspect never really reached that believability threshold. It is around 55% through the book, when Shadow first begins to show signs of any kind of romantic interest in Scarlet. I mean, it was clear from the beginning that Scarlet was going to be the love interest, based on the blurb and the simple fact that this is not the first romance story I’ve read, but that was the first instance where the text itself indicated that this was in fact the case. Only introducing the romantic attraction halfway through the book on its own is not an issue though. The issue is that it was combined with a very slow and clumsy build-up that never once felt organic or believable, and never managed to get me emotionally invested in the story. There is a big love confession moment at one point, where Scarlet tells Shadow «I’ve never met anyone else like you, in all my life», and it left me completely cold.

This is part of a larger issue of unearned moments that show up time and again throughout this book. Repeatedly, the reader is told things about a character, a setting, a relationship, etc. that was in no way set up by the writing up until that point. In one instance Scarlet is told by a side character that she is «incapable of love» and «a weak imitation of [her sister]» whose memory she dishonours every day. The way it is written makes it clear that this moment is supposed to have an emotional impact on the reader, but it doesn’t because up til that point we were never shown that this is even remotely true or something Scarlet struggles with.

In another instance Scarlet describes the landscape around them as choking and suffocating everything underneath, and gardens as «bare imitations of real nature». And again, if this was in anyway implied or shown previously, it might have hit emotionally. But none of the previous descriptions of the cities and countryside around them ever evoked a picture like that, so it just ends up feeling hollow.

There’s also the fact that Shadow originally lived in a city called Nava that was destroyed a long time ago, which is kinda implied to have been almost a utopian society. Shadow repeatedly mentions Nava, and that it was somehow better than what the present-day can offer, and yet we never actually learn much of anything about the place. Nostalgia, especially the kind that ignores all of the bad things about the past so that you can enjoy thinking of ‘the good old times’, is a great topic to include in a fantasy book. But the readers actually needs to know stuff - however distorted by time it may be - about the place in order for this to work. Just saying ‘this place used to exist and it was better than now’ doesn’t cut it.

Additionally, there are a bunch of weird style choices that didn’t much help improve the story either. There are so many instances of direct speech being interrupted by non-speech halfway through for no apparent reason. I’m not doing a good job of describing this so I’ll just insert an example: «‘Then what do you want? I had thought you came here,’ the Emperor said, ‘to ask about your sister.’» Why is «the Emperor said» inserted in the middle of the speech bubble, completely disrupting the flow of the text?

I was also frequently re-reading paragraphs because I thought I’d missed a sentence, only to realise that no, the passage was just written really weirdly, so that it felt as if a sentence was missing.

There’s more I could talk about, from the final battle being so low-key and underwhelming that I didn’t even realise it had happened until like 2 pages later, to the incredibly weirdly pace at which essential world-building elements were introduced, but this review is already way too long.

There are interesting elements in this book, and theoretically the story sounds really interesting, but the execution is just… not great. I will be keeping my eyes open for future works from this author, because this is her debut novel and I have high hopes that she will improve, given time.

libraryofflo's review against another edition

3.5

Thank you to Harper Voyager UK and Rachel Quin for sending me a copy of this book,

This was a great debut, and I can see myself rereading this and definitely reading anything else Yejin Suh writes. I had a really good time with this and didn’t want to put it down!

I think this had some really successful world building, the gods/falso gods obviously have so much influence and have shaped society, but also aren’t in charge? I think the way that they were pulling the strings behind everything was well done, whether I believed that all the characters would have believed it when they were also attempting to pull the strings.

What I think I didn’t connect with as much, were the characters. This was very much a plot driven story, so I didn’t see as much gradual character development as I would have liked for a book this length. There were some strong moments especially in the last 50 pages, but some aspects felt a little bit sudden and I would have enjoyed them being stretched out further.

thewhisperingpages's review

3.0

dark mysterious reflective slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

fiercereadsfiction's review

3.0

adventurous hopeful informative mysterious medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Content Warnings

bookish_martina's review

2.5

slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

e113's review

3.0

hopeful slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

fromthelibraryofsoph's review

2.0

I promise I tried so hard to love this book but I really struggled with this one in the end. I was drawn to this one for two reasons: a mythology retelling accompanied by an absolutely STUNNING cover.

This book had a really intriguing premise but I found it immediately difficult to connect with the world as I didn’t find enough time was dedicated to the overall world-building as is dedicated to the lore. Characters I found well-written but again, there was just no connection there for me.

Thank you as always to the author, publisher and NetGalley for allowing me to read an advance copy!

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