Take a photo of a barcode or cover
yarrowkat 's review for:
Thorn Queen
by Richelle Mead
what i mostly liked about the first volume in this would-be gritty urban fantasy series, Storm Born, is that it is set in Tucson. i love the desert, and have a strong appreciation for non-standard settings in fantasy, since so very, very much of it is set in England, LA, or San Francisco. so, yay, Tucson. An irritating, self-deceiving protagonist, mediocre plot development, and heavy emphasis on sex instead of character development complete the picture.
It does get better in this one. I picked it up almost idly, but was pleasantly surprised to find it an improvement on the original. Eugenie learns how to move past some of the self-deception: major improvement. There is some actual character growth going on. Too much reliance on sex *instead* of character, still, but the sex scenes are not badly written, so at least there's that. One knows what one is in for with Mead's work.
I was really enjoying the idea of a piece of faeryland mirroring the Sonoran desert, except that the author leans too heavily on adjectives like "merciless" and "brutal" to describe the sunlight... IME, people who love the desert much so much that their soul is shaped like it, don't really experience its light as brutal, so much as empowering, clear. And the desert is not "lifeless" or "barren" to any desert-lover, only to the outsider, who lacks the eyes with which to see this land, and all that lives on and in it. so that was my first clue that she ain't from around here. i almost cried, however, when she describes driving from Tucson (which is in southern Arizona) to a town "just over the Texas border" in ... four hours.
Um, hello? there's an ENTIRE STATE between Arizona and Texas? kind of a big one, too. i know it may not seem like New Mexico is, you know, culturally relevant, or something, but you cannot elide an entire state.
Fail, copy-editors. Double-fail, Mead, for not using google for five minutes to fact-check yourself.
It does get better in this one. I picked it up almost idly, but was pleasantly surprised to find it an improvement on the original. Eugenie learns how to move past some of the self-deception: major improvement. There is some actual character growth going on. Too much reliance on sex *instead* of character, still, but the sex scenes are not badly written, so at least there's that. One knows what one is in for with Mead's work.
I was really enjoying the idea of a piece of faeryland mirroring the Sonoran desert, except that the author leans too heavily on adjectives like "merciless" and "brutal" to describe the sunlight... IME, people who love the desert much so much that their soul is shaped like it, don't really experience its light as brutal, so much as empowering, clear. And the desert is not "lifeless" or "barren" to any desert-lover, only to the outsider, who lacks the eyes with which to see this land, and all that lives on and in it. so that was my first clue that she ain't from around here. i almost cried, however, when she describes driving from Tucson (which is in southern Arizona) to a town "just over the Texas border" in ... four hours.
Um, hello? there's an ENTIRE STATE between Arizona and Texas? kind of a big one, too. i know it may not seem like New Mexico is, you know, culturally relevant, or something, but you cannot elide an entire state.
Fail, copy-editors. Double-fail, Mead, for not using google for five minutes to fact-check yourself.