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A review by jcooper221
The Banished of Muirwood by Jeff Wheeler
2.75
The story was good. The plot was fresh and interesting throughout, I never really knew what was going to happen next.
I've seen other reviews describing the protagonist as whiny, and I'll give my own spin on this. Maia is utterly incompetent and reactive, as opposed to proactive. A protagonist like this is very difficult to pull off, and Wheeler did not deliver. Wheeler used the word "trembling" to describe her emotional state at least a hundred times. Like, I get it, she lives in a perpetual state of fear. Can we just move on with the story? I was more annoyed than sympathetic with her. She also doesn't really do anything, she's just ferried from one destination to the next.
There were also a few places where story facts didn't quite add up. For instance, Wheeler's depiction of Spoileravalanches is wrong. How did Maia not suffocate? Simply googling "how do people die from avalanches" would have saved him here.
At the end of the book, Spoilerin reference to the brand on her shoulder, Maia's grandmother tells her she will have to live with the consequences of her choices. And my immediate thought was, "What choice?" This entire book has been about the illusion of choice. Maia hasn't actually done anything of her own free will, she just tags along or does what other people tell her to. I can appreciate that we sometimes suffer for choices we made without fully knowing what we were doing. But in this story it's unsatisfying, especially when said choice was made before the beginning of the narrative. The reader can't identify with a choice they didn't actually see happen. There are a few story decisions like this that made the plot unconvincing and start to unravel.
I've seen other reviews describing the protagonist as whiny, and I'll give my own spin on this. Maia is utterly incompetent and reactive, as opposed to proactive. A protagonist like this is very difficult to pull off, and Wheeler did not deliver. Wheeler used the word "trembling" to describe her emotional state at least a hundred times. Like, I get it, she lives in a perpetual state of fear. Can we just move on with the story? I was more annoyed than sympathetic with her. She also doesn't really do anything, she's just ferried from one destination to the next.
There were also a few places where story facts didn't quite add up. For instance, Wheeler's depiction of Spoileravalanches is wrong. How did Maia not suffocate? Simply googling "how do people die from avalanches" would have saved him here.
At the end of the book, Spoilerin reference to the brand on her shoulder, Maia's grandmother tells her she will have to live with the consequences of her choices. And my immediate thought was, "What choice?" This entire book has been about the illusion of choice. Maia hasn't actually done anything of her own free will, she just tags along or does what other people tell her to. I can appreciate that we sometimes suffer for choices we made without fully knowing what we were doing. But in this story it's unsatisfying, especially when said choice was made before the beginning of the narrative. The reader can't identify with a choice they didn't actually see happen. There are a few story decisions like this that made the plot unconvincing and start to unravel.