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A review by wonkyjaw
Ravage the Dark by Tara Sim
3.0
3.5/5
I want to love this book very badly, but a lot of pieces felt almost hollow to me. It felt oddly paced with parts of the story told too quickly and other parts feeling circular. There was a lot of waffling about for a while, following intricate twists and turns that sometimes felt like they came with no foreshadowing and sometimes were far too obvious. There were moments with certain characters that were written like they were meant to have some real impact that just fell flat, probably because in the break between books I’d forgotten them entirely or why I cared about them. They didn’t have a whole lot to do or say here, just filler roles for the most part. Lastly, I understand that there’s a definite theme with the whole lack of trust and lying and everything, but one of my absolute biggest pet peeves is when major plot points could have been avoided if the characters had simply sat down and had an honest conversation. Perhaps it would have felt better for Amaya and Cayo to constantly have to force themselves into these leaps of trusts, laying it all out there (especially when what Amaya’s keeping secret is something she constantly wonders why she wasn’t told sooner; she actively laments the fact that it’d been kept a secret from her while continuing to keep it a secret herself while it festered). It would have been a more interesting character arc for either of them.
The good, though, is that this book holds the same level of technical writing that the first did and held some lines that I want to keep a tight hold on because they were so beautiful and they broke my heart. I still love Cayo and Amara in general and the side characters (for the most part) remained interesting even if I didn’t care about them as much (apart from Soria, that girl deserves an award for putting up with Cayo and Amara and the whole dang world). A lot of the twists and turns were fun to follow and made sense or caught me off guard in a good way the way the first book had. So I think I’ll continue to love this duology, even if this one let me down in some frustrating ways.
I want to love this book very badly, but a lot of pieces felt almost hollow to me. It felt oddly paced with parts of the story told too quickly and other parts feeling circular. There was a lot of waffling about for a while, following intricate twists and turns that sometimes felt like they came with no foreshadowing and sometimes were far too obvious. There were moments with certain characters that were written like they were meant to have some real impact that just fell flat, probably because in the break between books I’d forgotten them entirely or why I cared about them. They didn’t have a whole lot to do or say here, just filler roles for the most part. Lastly, I understand that there’s a definite theme with the whole lack of trust and lying and everything, but one of my absolute biggest pet peeves is when major plot points could have been avoided if the characters had simply sat down and had an honest conversation. Perhaps it would have felt better for Amaya and Cayo to constantly have to force themselves into these leaps of trusts, laying it all out there (especially when what Amaya’s keeping secret is something she constantly wonders why she wasn’t told sooner; she actively laments the fact that it’d been kept a secret from her while continuing to keep it a secret herself while it festered). It would have been a more interesting character arc for either of them.
The good, though, is that this book holds the same level of technical writing that the first did and held some lines that I want to keep a tight hold on because they were so beautiful and they broke my heart. I still love Cayo and Amara in general and the side characters (for the most part) remained interesting even if I didn’t care about them as much (apart from Soria, that girl deserves an award for putting up with Cayo and Amara and the whole dang world). A lot of the twists and turns were fun to follow and made sense or caught me off guard in a good way the way the first book had. So I think I’ll continue to love this duology, even if this one let me down in some frustrating ways.