Take a photo of a barcode or cover
8bitbrainstem 's review for:
The Court of Miracles
by Kester Grant
What a fucking let down....
Let’s be clear, folks. This is NOT Six of Crows. Don’t know who got the idea to market this book in that manner, but don’t even go there. If anything, this bares a slight resemblance to The Bone Season if you absolutely must have your successful YA series comparator and that is only due to the structured secret society of cast offs and criminals. If Court of Miracles was marketed solely for its reimagining of the French Revolution or Le Mis I think this story would have been better received. As it stands, the overwhelming expectations I had for this story were completely shattered on the pavement along with my heart. Which is sad because this is a beautiful fucking book.
The story starts out with so much potential, but I don’t believe the author had any clue of how to tie all of her ideas together. While attempting to add entirely too many character groups (criminals, royals, day-walking revolutionaries, etc.), each of whom have their own dedicated plot arcs, into a book barely 400 pages long nothing seemed to connect the way I wanted it to. Nothing is resolved in any meaningful way and it seems the only point of each of these groups was to provide the main character with a potential love interest. Seriously, after the fourth time someone obviously becomes infatuated with the half-starved, intentionally Plain Jain-ed heroine I wanted to curse this book to the darkest pits of hell. And with our heroine French kissing half of the male population of the whole country as a means to an end I can’t help but wonder if the author has any idea of how to write a meaningful male-female relationship where guys aren’t being lead around by their dicks so it appears that the female lead has any agency of her own. Besides the opening scene where Nina’s sister is sold to a flesh house she is given no other motivation or believable development for her to suddenly become the single greatest thief in the entire city. Hint: when she is only able to steal things from highly secure places because of her magical male-attracting musk it doesn’t make me like her. In fact, everything is seemingly just handed to the main character with minimal conflict. All these powerful and influential men just really want to see this scrappy, underdog gal succeed I guess????
I frankly don’t want to devote any more of my life to trying to explain my utter bafflement at how this book received this expert level marketing, but let me just say that the publishers have fleeced us all again, fellow readers. Basically, if every book seller and subscription service is suddenly raving about the same book at the same time I think I can safely say I’ve received my fair warning that the book in question is an overblown, subpar mess at best.
Let’s be clear, folks. This is NOT Six of Crows. Don’t know who got the idea to market this book in that manner, but don’t even go there. If anything, this bares a slight resemblance to The Bone Season if you absolutely must have your successful YA series comparator and that is only due to the structured secret society of cast offs and criminals. If Court of Miracles was marketed solely for its reimagining of the French Revolution or Le Mis I think this story would have been better received. As it stands, the overwhelming expectations I had for this story were completely shattered on the pavement along with my heart. Which is sad because this is a beautiful fucking book.
The story starts out with so much potential, but I don’t believe the author had any clue of how to tie all of her ideas together. While attempting to add entirely too many character groups (criminals, royals, day-walking revolutionaries, etc.), each of whom have their own dedicated plot arcs, into a book barely 400 pages long nothing seemed to connect the way I wanted it to. Nothing is resolved in any meaningful way and it seems the only point of each of these groups was to provide the main character with a potential love interest. Seriously, after the fourth time someone obviously becomes infatuated with the half-starved, intentionally Plain Jain-ed heroine I wanted to curse this book to the darkest pits of hell. And with our heroine French kissing half of the male population of the whole country as a means to an end I can’t help but wonder if the author has any idea of how to write a meaningful male-female relationship where guys aren’t being lead around by their dicks so it appears that the female lead has any agency of her own. Besides the opening scene where Nina’s sister is sold to a flesh house she is given no other motivation or believable development for her to suddenly become the single greatest thief in the entire city. Hint: when she is only able to steal things from highly secure places because of her magical male-attracting musk it doesn’t make me like her. In fact, everything is seemingly just handed to the main character with minimal conflict. All these powerful and influential men just really want to see this scrappy, underdog gal succeed I guess????
I frankly don’t want to devote any more of my life to trying to explain my utter bafflement at how this book received this expert level marketing, but let me just say that the publishers have fleeced us all again, fellow readers. Basically, if every book seller and subscription service is suddenly raving about the same book at the same time I think I can safely say I’ve received my fair warning that the book in question is an overblown, subpar mess at best.