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A review by bloopers
The Savior's Sister by Jenna Moreci
1.0
1 star -- would've given 1.5 but as I wrote this review I started realizing how bad this book actually was.
This review does contain slight spoilers for the beginning third of the novel, but no big twists. Also be prepared for some unorganization with some typos here and there.
qn = quick note
tl;dr at the end
————
So lets get the formalities down really quick, I LOVE the cover of the book, along with the synopsis. I was prepared to be a bit bored since this was essentially TSC, just from a different POV, meaning the same tournament, same characters, etc. I was also prepared to get through the sheer length of all 560 pages, hopefully learning more about Thessen along the way!
What I was not prepared for was the disappointment I got from what was essentially a book full of fluff—yes there was some new information here and there but a very unsatisfying amount so. There were many opportunities to take this book to an upper level, but none of them were taken.
I'll get to the main problem of this book, the lack of character depth. I think Leila was supposed to be this bad bitch who would do anything to survive. Instead, I got some random woman murdering people and also was a healer for the first 3/4ths of the book. During that last fourth she finally starts to take action, but the previous events were just so unsatisfying that it passed onto this last section.
Leila's character wasn't well developed, especially her emotions. She follows the personality type of hard on the outside, soft on the inside. While I don't mind this, it's written in a way where it only shows that hard sadness, with only little glimpses of happiness coming every few scenes. Even if it is really like that for Leila, mainly angry and sad, the writing style doesn't capitalize on those emotions and delve deep into their roots, causes, potential change, or the realization that she will always be angry/sad. All these branches to take a character arc, and none of them were taken, and it sucks since I really do want to like Leila.
The same thing goes for all the side characters such as her servant group(Faun, Nix, etc), the entire Senate(the government rulers;Wembleton, Romulous, etc), and other groups I likely forgot to mention. While I understand that side-characters shouldn't be developed as much since they won't be featured as often, it would be nice to have something.(qn: there is a glimmer of hope, Cosmina! One of the Savior's sisters, down a few paras from here)
Since I'm on the topic of characters, I'll go to Tobias and his & Leila's romance. I don't really have much to say about him. He's Tobias, a kind respectful man who's fighting for his family and has a big cock, I barely get to know about him.
(qn: I absolutely hate the amount of times the word "cock" is used. I get that it's better than something like "member" and that the characters are living in a different society so they might use different words, but once you hear/read it so many times it becomes weirdly distorted and uncomfy)
On the topic of romance, it was, like all these characters, underdeveloped. It was more of an insta-love type romance which isn't my personal tastes, but it's okay. There was still time to develop the romance itself, right? All the time used was just a waste of them talking about unimportant events that didn't add character and romance depth which was especially disappointing for Tobias since this was his only source of his development, at least in TSS.
Yes, he does have a whole book based on his POV, but I don't remember that. This leads into something else: how I hoped to refresh my memory on who Tobias was, how the tournament was doing, etc. Like every chapter there would be some scroll or whatever that said something like: "___ died because of ___. ___ won the challenge, expect his reward of ___ soon"
Instead we get the Proctor, Romulous, telling a somewhat informational two-sentence summary of the tournament for like 3 chapters until he just suddenly stops, likely due to plot.
Before I get onto other things, I wanna talk about Cosmia, the sister Leila trades her spot of Savior with. I loved her character, she had this distinct minipulative-royal like voice and I wished that the other characters had this distinction. She is like the perfect combination of a queen, being horny, and manipulation all at the same time and I just wish her backstory was more delved into.
Now, finally, to the plot. It was like so many things would happen, but nothing at the same time. Now to get a few things straight so nobody will be confused, I'll quickly explain what Leila does during the first maybe 3/4ths of the book(this is where the slight spoilers come in):
After learning that she is to die, Leila starts torturing and killing the Senators for information. She recruits Romulous and Wembleton and threatens their life to do some tasks, but overall they're not important. With that explained, lets go on.
Lets say Leila plans to torture a senator. First she wakes up and goes to a Senate meeting where she learns about unmeaningful information about trade, etc. Then she goes and does the deed and gets the information, and barely useful information at that, either vague or unneeded. As a "reward," Leila gets some alone time with Tobias which is also unhelpful in terms of romance and character development. While that's going on, Leila has all these thoughts about what she should do next, how she should go forward, etc, and while I get that path, it does tend to drag on due to other banter with side characters, This is what I mean, so many conversations and actions are happening, but at the end of the day, barely anything is given, say for a secret or rarely two.
I dealt with this for a long time until it just kept going and going and eventually got bored. The information was still so miniscule, I didn't feel any connection or romance between Tobias and Leila, and eventually, the only reason I was reading was because of the hope that it would get better.
It did get better. On chapter 33, The Culmination, 524 pages in the hardcover version of the book. It was also the second-to-last chapter, and quite possibly the only good one since it had drama, twists, good communication, and everything was simply perfect from these 20~ pages.
The thing is, that perfection came too late. 524 pages of trudging through unmeaningful filler, just to get 20 pages of goodness which would soon simply go away in the next(and last) chapter.
This kinda goes with plot, the writing. I liked it, it was engaging, but the content it was included in was boring. It was also descriptive, perhaps too descriptive, but other than that it was... fine. I honestly don't know what to say about this, it was just fine. Oh yeah - the dialogue was written weirdly. I don't know if it was because of word choice, but it constantly changed from 30 - 17 - 25 yrs old which gave me a bit of whiplash.
Now I wanna get into the worldbuilding. There doesn't seem to be any uniqueness from Thessen to somewhere like the U.S. They supposedly eat the same things, speak the same language, wear more-or-less the same clothes the main difference being the inclusion of magic. There is one other nation in particular, Khovaria. They have multiple different dialects, unsure on the food, but do wear different clothes, more focused on practicality than reality.
Now for my one last disappointment, the government. I hoped to learn more about the ins and outs of Thessen because Leila was constantly involved in Senate meetings talking about trade, financial, and other problems. The thing is, all of the information was so *boring*. There wasn't even a bit of drama to keep me interested in all of the boring stuff. This could've been to empathize that Thessen was a perfect nation, but my thoughts constantly moved to other topics like a different dark-fantasy romance novel I could've gotten instead of this one.
---
tl;dr - Promising plot but all contents disappointed me as it was essentially filler and a bridge for the third book. Perhaps a third of the book could be removed and it would be the same. Okay writing, weird dialogue but compensated with good description. Characters were VERY poorly developed(especially Leila), with no knowledge about any of them, along with no unique voices say for a few side characters. Poor romance too; insta-love and I felt no connection during any of their interactions. Poor worldbuilding too, Thessen didn't feel unique and barely anything is learned about it here.
I would strongly recommend not getting this book unless you wanna give Moreci a kind of thanks for giving writing advice, but even so there's still her Patreon and merch store, but in the end it's up to you if you follow a bad or good review.
---
(Unrelated) I'll probably still get TSA(which I'm like 99% sure is The Saviors Assassin) since Leila and Tobias will *FINALLY* get into more of the world (mostly) alone. This means so many more chances to develop characters, romance, and worldbuilding. If this book somehow flops, then all hope for this series is just completely gone for me.
This review does contain slight spoilers for the beginning third of the novel, but no big twists. Also be prepared for some unorganization with some typos here and there.
qn = quick note
tl;dr at the end
————
So lets get the formalities down really quick, I LOVE the cover of the book, along with the synopsis. I was prepared to be a bit bored since this was essentially TSC, just from a different POV, meaning the same tournament, same characters, etc. I was also prepared to get through the sheer length of all 560 pages, hopefully learning more about Thessen along the way!
What I was not prepared for was the disappointment I got from what was essentially a book full of fluff—yes there was some new information here and there but a very unsatisfying amount so. There were many opportunities to take this book to an upper level, but none of them were taken.
I'll get to the main problem of this book, the lack of character depth. I think Leila was supposed to be this bad bitch who would do anything to survive. Instead, I got some random woman murdering people and also was a healer for the first 3/4ths of the book. During that last fourth she finally starts to take action, but the previous events were just so unsatisfying that it passed onto this last section.
Leila's character wasn't well developed, especially her emotions. She follows the personality type of hard on the outside, soft on the inside. While I don't mind this, it's written in a way where it only shows that hard sadness, with only little glimpses of happiness coming every few scenes. Even if it is really like that for Leila, mainly angry and sad, the writing style doesn't capitalize on those emotions and delve deep into their roots, causes, potential change, or the realization that she will always be angry/sad. All these branches to take a character arc, and none of them were taken, and it sucks since I really do want to like Leila.
The same thing goes for all the side characters such as her servant group(Faun, Nix, etc), the entire Senate(the government rulers;Wembleton, Romulous, etc), and other groups I likely forgot to mention. While I understand that side-characters shouldn't be developed as much since they won't be featured as often, it would be nice to have something.(qn: there is a glimmer of hope, Cosmina! One of the Savior's sisters, down a few paras from here)
Since I'm on the topic of characters, I'll go to Tobias and his & Leila's romance. I don't really have much to say about him. He's Tobias, a kind respectful man who's fighting for his family and has a big cock, I barely get to know about him.
(qn: I absolutely hate the amount of times the word "cock" is used. I get that it's better than something like "member" and that the characters are living in a different society so they might use different words, but once you hear/read it so many times it becomes weirdly distorted and uncomfy)
On the topic of romance, it was, like all these characters, underdeveloped. It was more of an insta-love type romance which isn't my personal tastes, but it's okay. There was still time to develop the romance itself, right? All the time used was just a waste of them talking about unimportant events that didn't add character and romance depth which was especially disappointing for Tobias since this was his only source of his development, at least in TSS.
Yes, he does have a whole book based on his POV, but I don't remember that. This leads into something else: how I hoped to refresh my memory on who Tobias was, how the tournament was doing, etc. Like every chapter there would be some scroll or whatever that said something like: "___ died because of ___. ___ won the challenge, expect his reward of ___ soon"
Instead we get the Proctor, Romulous, telling a somewhat informational two-sentence summary of the tournament for like 3 chapters until he just suddenly stops, likely due to plot.
Before I get onto other things, I wanna talk about Cosmia, the sister Leila trades her spot of Savior with. I loved her character, she had this distinct minipulative-royal like voice and I wished that the other characters had this distinction. She is like the perfect combination of a queen, being horny, and manipulation all at the same time and I just wish her backstory was more delved into.
Now, finally, to the plot. It was like so many things would happen, but nothing at the same time. Now to get a few things straight so nobody will be confused, I'll quickly explain what Leila does during the first maybe 3/4ths of the book(this is where the slight spoilers come in):
After learning that she is to die, Leila starts torturing and killing the Senators for information. She recruits Romulous and Wembleton and threatens their life to do some tasks, but overall they're not important. With that explained, lets go on.
Lets say Leila plans to torture a senator. First she wakes up and goes to a Senate meeting where she learns about unmeaningful information about trade, etc. Then she goes and does the deed and gets the information, and barely useful information at that, either vague or unneeded. As a "reward," Leila gets some alone time with Tobias which is also unhelpful in terms of romance and character development. While that's going on, Leila has all these thoughts about what she should do next, how she should go forward, etc, and while I get that path, it does tend to drag on due to other banter with side characters, This is what I mean, so many conversations and actions are happening, but at the end of the day, barely anything is given, say for a secret or rarely two.
I dealt with this for a long time until it just kept going and going and eventually got bored. The information was still so miniscule, I didn't feel any connection or romance between Tobias and Leila, and eventually, the only reason I was reading was because of the hope that it would get better.
It did get better. On chapter 33, The Culmination, 524 pages in the hardcover version of the book. It was also the second-to-last chapter, and quite possibly the only good one since it had drama, twists, good communication, and everything was simply perfect from these 20~ pages.
The thing is, that perfection came too late. 524 pages of trudging through unmeaningful filler, just to get 20 pages of goodness which would soon simply go away in the next(and last) chapter.
This kinda goes with plot, the writing. I liked it, it was engaging, but the content it was included in was boring. It was also descriptive, perhaps too descriptive, but other than that it was... fine. I honestly don't know what to say about this, it was just fine. Oh yeah - the dialogue was written weirdly. I don't know if it was because of word choice, but it constantly changed from 30 - 17 - 25 yrs old which gave me a bit of whiplash.
Now I wanna get into the worldbuilding. There doesn't seem to be any uniqueness from Thessen to somewhere like the U.S. They supposedly eat the same things, speak the same language, wear more-or-less the same clothes the main difference being the inclusion of magic. There is one other nation in particular, Khovaria. They have multiple different dialects, unsure on the food, but do wear different clothes, more focused on practicality than reality.
Now for my one last disappointment, the government. I hoped to learn more about the ins and outs of Thessen because Leila was constantly involved in Senate meetings talking about trade, financial, and other problems. The thing is, all of the information was so *boring*. There wasn't even a bit of drama to keep me interested in all of the boring stuff. This could've been to empathize that Thessen was a perfect nation, but my thoughts constantly moved to other topics like a different dark-fantasy romance novel I could've gotten instead of this one.
---
tl;dr - Promising plot but all contents disappointed me as it was essentially filler and a bridge for the third book. Perhaps a third of the book could be removed and it would be the same. Okay writing, weird dialogue but compensated with good description. Characters were VERY poorly developed(especially Leila), with no knowledge about any of them, along with no unique voices say for a few side characters. Poor romance too; insta-love and I felt no connection during any of their interactions. Poor worldbuilding too, Thessen didn't feel unique and barely anything is learned about it here.
I would strongly recommend not getting this book unless you wanna give Moreci a kind of thanks for giving writing advice, but even so there's still her Patreon and merch store, but in the end it's up to you if you follow a bad or good review.
---
(Unrelated) I'll probably still get TSA(which I'm like 99% sure is The Saviors Assassin) since Leila and Tobias will *FINALLY* get into more of the world (mostly) alone. This means so many more chances to develop characters, romance, and worldbuilding. If this book somehow flops, then all hope for this series is just completely gone for me.