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A review by vermidian
Rule of Wolves by Leigh Bardugo
3.0
This is more a 3.5 star read for me, but I rounded down to tip the average closer to my ideal. I enjoyed the book, honestly, but there were a lot of things that made me wish the author had taken a different direction. I think this duology is by far the weakest installation in this series, which makes me really kind of sad. A lot of those things are spoilers, so I won't touch on them much.
Between the trans representation and the POC representation, both with Asian characters and Suli characters, the book does quite a bit. And it's great. Don't get me wrong, I think it could be handled better - especially the trans character's ending. But as far as YA books go, it doesn't shy away from having characters that aren't cis, straight, and white which I love.
Unfortunately, I found this to be a very plot-driven book as opposed to the Six of Crows duology (which I loved) which was character-driven. This book took the characters and used them as vehicles for a plot much like the original trilogy did. Unfortunately, this led to characters being forced to fit a mold for the sake of a plot. I found this to be particularly true for most of the main characters, as well as some of the side characters. They were often limited in the scope of what they could do because of the direction Bardugo wanted the plot to go. And while that's fine, I found that the characters just felt thin at times, often repeating old laments to drive a point home while actual character development waited in the wings. There also isn't a tremendous amount of character development for any characters. If anyone gets character development in these books, it's Hanne first and Nikolai a distant second.
Also,
Between the trans representation and the POC representation, both with Asian characters and Suli characters, the book does quite a bit. And it's great. Don't get me wrong, I think it could be handled better - especially the trans character's ending. But as far as YA books go, it doesn't shy away from having characters that aren't cis, straight, and white which I love.
Unfortunately, I found this to be a very plot-driven book as opposed to the Six of Crows duology (which I loved) which was character-driven. This book took the characters and used them as vehicles for a plot much like the original trilogy did. Unfortunately, this led to characters being forced to fit a mold for the sake of a plot. I found this to be particularly true for most of the main characters, as well as some of the side characters. They were often limited in the scope of what they could do because of the direction Bardugo wanted the plot to go. And while that's fine, I found that the characters just felt thin at times, often repeating old laments to drive a point home while actual character development waited in the wings. There also isn't a tremendous amount of character development for any characters. If anyone gets character development in these books, it's Hanne first and Nikolai a distant second.
Also,