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A review by peculiarb
Two Thousand Years by M. Dalto
adventurous
dark
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.0
CW: Discussion of rape.
I suppose the place to start with this book is the beginning. When Alex comes home from a birthday party, she finds her house broken into and its promptly whisked off to The Empire by Treyan because she's the prophesised Queen Empress. Despite this predestined fate, Alex is entirely unwilling and considers this a kidnapping, which set the tone of the novel for me. Though this doesn't last long as Alex decides she's actually attracted to Treyan by the 20% marker.
While she doesn't decide to actually stay until later, this sudden reversal of her previous feelings left me questioning where the novel would take their relationship. Not only is she being kidnapped, she also has to put up with Treyan being smug about the whole thing from the very beginning, which grew increasingly irritating. I suppose Treyan is supposed to be this dark and brooding prince, but there's a lot more build up needed character-wise.
Another character that lacks build up is the villain. At first, Reylor is presented as this evil man out to destroy The Empire. His awful behaviour shows up early but it's never fully explained why he's actually trying to bring the system down, making him come off as cartoonish for the first half. Even during the chapters with his POV, he's lacks nuance as he's consumed with revenge.
A final point on this aspect of the book: Two Thousand Years by M. Dalto contains multiple instances of assault and attempted rape, which I could grudgingly ignore but it also contains on page rape. Now, when I came across this, I went looking in the book, the author's website, goodreads, and even netgalley for content warnings that I might have missed but there were none. While it's not described in great detail, the lead up to it and the aftermath are.
Plot wise the book got better after this as the story delved into deeper issues, though I don't agree with how the rape was handled.
However, despite the potential this book had, I cannot trust that this won't happen again in a future book of the series, therefore I cannot continue. I only made it to the end of this one in order to review this.
It was irresponsible not to include trigger warnings when this book was released and remains irresponsible in 2021. I shouldn't have to rely on reviews (most of which do not include this trigger warning by the way) to know whether or not I will come across a traumatic such scene. This is the bare minimum, do better.
I suppose the place to start with this book is the beginning. When Alex comes home from a birthday party, she finds her house broken into and its promptly whisked off to The Empire by Treyan because she's the prophesised Queen Empress. Despite this predestined fate, Alex is entirely unwilling and considers this a kidnapping, which set the tone of the novel for me. Though this doesn't last long as Alex decides she's actually attracted to Treyan by the 20% marker.
While she doesn't decide to actually stay until later, this sudden reversal of her previous feelings left me questioning where the novel would take their relationship. Not only is she being kidnapped, she also has to put up with Treyan being smug about the whole thing from the very beginning, which grew increasingly irritating. I suppose Treyan is supposed to be this dark and brooding prince, but there's a lot more build up needed character-wise.
Another character that lacks build up is the villain. At first, Reylor is presented as this evil man out to destroy The Empire. His awful behaviour shows up early but it's never fully explained why he's actually trying to bring the system down, making him come off as cartoonish for the first half. Even during the chapters with his POV, he's lacks nuance as he's consumed with revenge.
A final point on this aspect of the book: Two Thousand Years by M. Dalto contains multiple instances of assault and attempted rape, which I could grudgingly ignore but it also contains on page rape. Now, when I came across this, I went looking in the book, the author's website, goodreads, and even netgalley for content warnings that I might have missed but there were none. While it's not described in great detail, the lead up to it and the aftermath are.
Plot wise the book got better after this as the story delved into deeper issues, though I don't agree with how the rape was handled.
However, despite the potential this book had, I cannot trust that this won't happen again in a future book of the series, therefore I cannot continue. I only made it to the end of this one in order to review this.
It was irresponsible not to include trigger warnings when this book was released and remains irresponsible in 2021. I shouldn't have to rely on reviews (most of which do not include this trigger warning by the way) to know whether or not I will come across a traumatic such scene. This is the bare minimum, do better.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gore and Sexual assault
Moderate: Rape
The book itself has no trigger warnings.