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A review by justinbaumann71
The Sevenfold Hunters by Rose Egal
3.0
Thank you to the Penguin Random House audio app for access to this story.
I initially really liked this story. One it has a simple but effective premise that drops you fairly quick into the action along with a decently enjoyable cast of characters and two POVs that we swap between that of a lolely recruit who is figuring out her place at Carisle with Artimes and the more experienced upperclassman with Abyan.
However, the story struggles in overexplaining its lore up front and maybe this is more of a marketing issue but its not clear if this is a series or not. I read it thinking it was a standalone so I expected a clear and concise well paced story and the front half was very slow in building what is a decent mystery and motivating factors, but the back half doesn't really speed up to make the stakes feel dire leading to a floppy ending that could set up another book since not everything was well answered by the end.
This leads to a story that the more I sit on it feels lackluster. Additionally, the large cast of characters means that since I am an avid reader the characters felt more like archetypes more than they felt unique. You have rich boy, noble boy, tough but fair girl, hard ass girl, tech/hacker boy, and plucky MC who is fish out of water in this big bad world. It just leaves you wanting bc the ideas are solid without the best execution.
Overall I went back and forth on this one but ulitimately felt that i needed to down rate it to a 3 due to a ton of tiny cuts breaking down a good start.
I initially really liked this story. One it has a simple but effective premise that drops you fairly quick into the action along with a decently enjoyable cast of characters and two POVs that we swap between that of a lolely recruit who is figuring out her place at Carisle with Artimes and the more experienced upperclassman with Abyan.
However, the story struggles in overexplaining its lore up front and maybe this is more of a marketing issue but its not clear if this is a series or not. I read it thinking it was a standalone so I expected a clear and concise well paced story and the front half was very slow in building what is a decent mystery and motivating factors, but the back half doesn't really speed up to make the stakes feel dire leading to a floppy ending that could set up another book since not everything was well answered by the end.
This leads to a story that the more I sit on it feels lackluster. Additionally, the large cast of characters means that since I am an avid reader the characters felt more like archetypes more than they felt unique. You have rich boy, noble boy, tough but fair girl, hard ass girl, tech/hacker boy, and plucky MC who is fish out of water in this big bad world. It just leaves you wanting bc the ideas are solid without the best execution.
Overall I went back and forth on this one but ulitimately felt that i needed to down rate it to a 3 due to a ton of tiny cuts breaking down a good start.