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A review by teokajlibroj
The Justice of Kings by Richard Swan
2.0
To be honest, I never really got into this book. The first half in particular was a slog and I just found the writing to be dull, with a lot of over-explaining unimportant details. For example, there's a scene where the main characters enter a town (described in great in great detail), then they leave their horses with some guards (again greatly detailed), enter a house (more description) and then walk to another house (lots more description), before finally interviewing someone. The problem is none of this is interesting. I want to read an entertaining story, not excessive detail on the interior design of an imaginary house.
The action picks up in the second half, but it's pretty standard and cliche, with tropes familiar to anyone who has seen action scenes before. The characters succeed mainly due to sheer luck and improbably timing rather than any skill of their own. There's a silly scene where a character is held prisoner in a dungeon and . . . just runs away. Yeah, that's right, they just run out the door and the villians just don't catch them.
By far the biggest problem is the narrator, Helena, who felt more like a narrative device than an actual person. She spends most of the book passively observing her surroundings, which made me wonder what the point of creating her character in the first place was.
We are repeatedly told that she is an intelligent 19 year old woman who grew up on the streets, but none of her actions match this. Instead she is incredibly naïve and constantly requires obvious things explained to her. She acts like a child, repeatedly throwing tantrums and sulks over the most trivial issue. She is like a parody of a teenage girl who only cares about boys and falls in "love" with someone she has met only twice. It was impossible to believe this girl had really been a street orphan or had spent two years working with a justice. If instead you had told me she was a spoilt 14 year old who had never left her mansion, I would have found that more credible.
The action picks up in the second half, but it's pretty standard and cliche, with tropes familiar to anyone who has seen action scenes before. The characters succeed mainly due to sheer luck and improbably timing rather than any skill of their own. There's a silly scene where a character is held prisoner in a dungeon and . . . just runs away. Yeah, that's right, they just run out the door and the villians just don't catch them.
By far the biggest problem is the narrator, Helena, who felt more like a narrative device than an actual person. She spends most of the book passively observing her surroundings, which made me wonder what the point of creating her character in the first place was.
We are repeatedly told that she is an intelligent 19 year old woman who grew up on the streets, but none of her actions match this. Instead she is incredibly naïve and constantly requires obvious things explained to her. She acts like a child, repeatedly throwing tantrums and sulks over the most trivial issue. She is like a parody of a teenage girl who only cares about boys and falls in "love" with someone she has met only twice. It was impossible to believe this girl had really been a street orphan or had spent two years working with a justice. If instead you had told me she was a spoilt 14 year old who had never left her mansion, I would have found that more credible.