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A review by sreddous
The Queen of Days by Greta Kelly
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
The plot is overall super cool and I enjoyed the worldbuilding of all the "realms" we visit here. The descriptions of what the gods to do the people is gross and scary in a spectacular way. I couldn't get enough of the gross freakin' descriptions of landscapes and monsters and powers here. The writing style is straightforward and extremely effective in this way. I like all the slimy, untrustworthy background characters. This book does a good job of being hard to predict in some ways without making things come too out-of-left-field.
I also really liked the dual-POV setup here. Seeing things from Tass's perspective gives us a nice little window into seeing how non-humans operate in this world, which helps us get used to the ideas of rogue gods and demigods and demons running around affecting things that happen to humans. The stakes are consistently high and the pacing is overall easy to follow.
The one thing that stops this from being a 5-star experience for me personally is: I really didn't believe or enjoy any of the emotional connections between Bal and Mira and the other humans on the team (notes on Tass in a sec). Bal makes all these huge, sweeping, risky decisions because he wants to protect Mira -- but really, I just found Mira to be a pain and to be annoying, which unfortunately made it a bit hard to be suuuper on-board for when Bal was doing Plot Things that involved saving/protecting her (which is...most of the plot). I caught myself constantly thinking "omg lmao leave her behind with the boss guy so she can be babysat and you can actually go do Plot Things, lmao ugh she's holding you back get rid of her" and I don't get the impression I was supposed to think that. But I do... other books like the Hunger Games where the main character is motivated to protect a sibling still do the work of showing Prim's unique homemaking talents and Katniss's and Prim's genuinely-loving connection. This book doesn't really do that -- the whole time, Bal and Mira just constantly bicker bicker and argue about how much protection she needs (I feel like the majority of Mira's dialogue is some form of "I'm not a child/you don't have to protect me!" and.... then of freakin' course he has to protect her lol sigh) and like... I guess that's not unrealistic sibling/tween behavior, but it doesn't make me want to root for them to stick together.
For what it's worth, Tass is a similarly-disconnected character who then gets tangled up with this group, BUT the way Tass learns to connect with humans is lovely and well-paced. I definitely was rooting for her to stay connected and to have emotional friendships, a similar sort of setup worked really well for her... I wish the other POV narrator, Bal, also got that amount of genuine connection on the page!
Overall, this was fun! There's a lot of creative horrible villain and god powers that'll keep you anxious in a good way the whole time.
I also really liked the dual-POV setup here. Seeing things from Tass's perspective gives us a nice little window into seeing how non-humans operate in this world, which helps us get used to the ideas of rogue gods and demigods and demons running around affecting things that happen to humans. The stakes are consistently high and the pacing is overall easy to follow.
The one thing that stops this from being a 5-star experience for me personally is: I really didn't believe or enjoy any of the emotional connections between Bal and Mira and the other humans on the team (notes on Tass in a sec). Bal makes all these huge, sweeping, risky decisions because he wants to protect Mira -- but really, I just found Mira to be a pain and to be annoying, which unfortunately made it a bit hard to be suuuper on-board for when Bal was doing Plot Things that involved saving/protecting her (which is...most of the plot). I caught myself constantly thinking "omg lmao leave her behind with the boss guy so she can be babysat and you can actually go do Plot Things, lmao ugh she's holding you back get rid of her" and I don't get the impression I was supposed to think that. But I do... other books like the Hunger Games where the main character is motivated to protect a sibling still do the work of showing Prim's unique homemaking talents and Katniss's and Prim's genuinely-loving connection. This book doesn't really do that -- the whole time, Bal and Mira just constantly bicker bicker and argue about how much protection she needs (I feel like the majority of Mira's dialogue is some form of "I'm not a child/you don't have to protect me!" and.... then of freakin' course he has to protect her lol sigh) and like... I guess that's not unrealistic sibling/tween behavior, but it doesn't make me want to root for them to stick together.
For what it's worth, Tass is a similarly-disconnected character who then gets tangled up with this group, BUT the way Tass learns to connect with humans is lovely and well-paced. I definitely was rooting for her to stay connected and to have emotional friendships, a similar sort of setup worked really well for her... I wish the other POV narrator, Bal, also got that amount of genuine connection on the page!
Overall, this was fun! There's a lot of creative horrible villain and god powers that'll keep you anxious in a good way the whole time.