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A review by inkwellshadows
Warrior Princess Assassin by Brigid Kemmerer
adventurous
challenging
dark
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.0
Oh boy where do I begin?
I initially requested to Warrior Princess Assassin on netgalley because I was a BIG fan of Brigid Kemmerer’s other series - Cursebreakers. What I loved about that series was the storytelling, the excitement on each page, character depth, and the romances were so well done.
I have absolutely no idea where any of that energy went with her adult fantasy debut. WPA started off strong but after a few chapters, it started to lose steam. Part of me feels like perhaps we lost the plot when trying to hop onto the romantasy train….
In my opinion, I thought the barebones plot we were given was entirely uninteresting and far too predictable, but not in a fun way where you felt rewarded for having picked up on context clues. It was all fairly obvious from the get go who the real antagonist was all along.
The book focused way too much on character interaction and neglected to explain much about the worldbuilding to the reader, which would have been extremely important. By the end of the book, I understood next to nothing about the political relationships and history between the three countries/entities involved in the conflict.
The characters had the same arguments and conversations consistently over and over and it dragged on for way too long. I considered dnf’ing multiple times as the story spent way too much time on the characters traveling and repetitive interactions.
Now when it came to the romance, I felt that the lack of chemistry between the three characters as a whole made the throuple feel uncomfortable and forced. The spicy scenes we got in the last ten percent of the book felt awkward, clunky and weirdly placed in that point in the story that I ended up skimming just to get through to the ending.
I tried really really hard to like this story but I fear this kind of storytelling is NOT my cup of tea. I think I would have liked it if there was a better balance of the fantasy aspect of the story.
As always, thank you to Avon & Harper Collins for letting me read an early copy for free in exchange for a review. I likely will not be continuing this series. I may still recommend to my audience as this book may be interesting to others.
I initially requested to Warrior Princess Assassin on netgalley because I was a BIG fan of Brigid Kemmerer’s other series - Cursebreakers. What I loved about that series was the storytelling, the excitement on each page, character depth, and the romances were so well done.
I have absolutely no idea where any of that energy went with her adult fantasy debut. WPA started off strong but after a few chapters, it started to lose steam. Part of me feels like perhaps we lost the plot when trying to hop onto the romantasy train….
In my opinion, I thought the barebones plot we were given was entirely uninteresting and far too predictable, but not in a fun way where you felt rewarded for having picked up on context clues. It was all fairly obvious from the get go who the real antagonist was all along.
The book focused way too much on character interaction and neglected to explain much about the worldbuilding to the reader, which would have been extremely important. By the end of the book, I understood next to nothing about the political relationships and history between the three countries/entities involved in the conflict.
The characters had the same arguments and conversations consistently over and over and it dragged on for way too long. I considered dnf’ing multiple times as the story spent way too much time on the characters traveling and repetitive interactions.
Now when it came to the romance, I felt that the lack of chemistry between the three characters as a whole made the throuple feel uncomfortable and forced. The spicy scenes we got in the last ten percent of the book felt awkward, clunky and weirdly placed in that point in the story that I ended up skimming just to get through to the ending.
I tried really really hard to like this story but I fear this kind of storytelling is NOT my cup of tea. I think I would have liked it if there was a better balance of the fantasy aspect of the story.
As always, thank you to Avon & Harper Collins for letting me read an early copy for free in exchange for a review. I likely will not be continuing this series. I may still recommend to my audience as this book may be interesting to others.
Content Warnings
Minor: Sexual assault, Sexual content, Slavery, Trafficking, War