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A review by milktoast
Brightly Woven by Alexandra Bracken
2.0
I've been on sort of a binge of YA fantasy books lately, so at this point I'm a bit more critical than I would be if I just randomly picked one up. Brightly Woven is not bad, but....besides the worldbuilding heavily folding in religion (something I'm always excited to see in fantasy), it just wasn't that interesting. There is a long list of tropes that I don't mind if well executed, like a heroine with a special secret one in a million power, a love interest who is a jerk because of his secret pain/ because he just cares so much, and a magic system that is illdefined. This book had all of those, and it did almost nothing interesting with them.
I will say that heroine's secret power was interesting in that it was a BAD power, and had the book pushed that further, I would have been more into it. If the politics of the realm had been more complex, I would have been more into it. If the themes explored at the beginning of the book (a lot to do with agency) had been delivered on better in the second half, I would have been more into it. As it is though, I can only really see it as a moderately entertaining book that didn't live up to its potential. Which is not the most terrible thing, and wouldn't stop me from trying another book by the author (I believe it's her debut?) if I heard good things, but. I wouldn't highly recommend this one.
I will say that heroine's secret power was interesting in that it was a BAD power, and had the book pushed that further, I would have been more into it. If the politics of the realm had been more complex, I would have been more into it. If the themes explored at the beginning of the book (a lot to do with agency) had been delivered on better in the second half, I would have been more into it. As it is though, I can only really see it as a moderately entertaining book that didn't live up to its potential. Which is not the most terrible thing, and wouldn't stop me from trying another book by the author (I believe it's her debut?) if I heard good things, but. I wouldn't highly recommend this one.