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A review by adancewithbooks
The Battle by Karuna Riazi
2.0
Thank you to Simon & Schuster for the review copy in exchange for an honest review. This does not change my opinion in anyway.
2,5 stars
TW: Police schooting at Children / Fire Bombs
The Battle is the sequel to The Gauntlet, and almost like a companion novel. Unfortunately it could not quite live up to the first book. The compelling things from the first book seemed to have fallen away.
The Battle focuses on Ahmad, the younger brother of Farah who she had to find back in the first book. The game was destroyed but managed to rebuild itself and took a more modern route, appearing to Ahmad as a console game. Inside the game everything was also videogame like.
Taking the setting from the middle eastern setting to a generic video game made it lose quite a lot for me. The clear descriptions the first book had felt like they were nowhere to be found in here. It was generic. I had little idea what anything looked like. Adding on to that, the game lost its clear rules and there was just chaos with the challenges. I had no idea what exactly we were heading for in most challenges. It didn’t make it a fun read.
I was excited we got Ahmad as a main character now. From the first book we learned that he had ADHD and I was excited we were going to get that rep in here more front and center. Except I don’t think we did. I think it was mentioned way at the start of this book but the rest of the book just seemed to ignore it. Or that is how I felt in any case.
A theme of the book is friendship which is great. However I don’t understand this friendship. She never gave him attention, never stuck up to him, never smiled at him, nothing. Then this game appeals to her (as the game does) and whoop there she is. They trust each other and that is the end. Again, nothing is actually talked about. Also her personality gave me a whiplash, it was all over the place.
Also there was scene where the police was trying to catch the children and shooting flame bombs at them or something. This bothered me because it certainly didn’t need the violence and it has the potential to be quite triggering for this age group.
Overall I unfortunately didn’t quite enjoy this sequel like I did the first book.
2,5 stars
TW: Police schooting at Children / Fire Bombs
The Battle is the sequel to The Gauntlet, and almost like a companion novel. Unfortunately it could not quite live up to the first book. The compelling things from the first book seemed to have fallen away.
The Battle focuses on Ahmad, the younger brother of Farah who she had to find back in the first book. The game was destroyed but managed to rebuild itself and took a more modern route, appearing to Ahmad as a console game. Inside the game everything was also videogame like.
Taking the setting from the middle eastern setting to a generic video game made it lose quite a lot for me. The clear descriptions the first book had felt like they were nowhere to be found in here. It was generic. I had little idea what anything looked like. Adding on to that, the game lost its clear rules and there was just chaos with the challenges. I had no idea what exactly we were heading for in most challenges. It didn’t make it a fun read.
I was excited we got Ahmad as a main character now. From the first book we learned that he had ADHD and I was excited we were going to get that rep in here more front and center. Except I don’t think we did. I think it was mentioned way at the start of this book but the rest of the book just seemed to ignore it. Or that is how I felt in any case.
A theme of the book is friendship which is great. However I don’t understand this friendship. She never gave him attention, never stuck up to him, never smiled at him, nothing. Then this game appeals to her (as the game does) and whoop there she is. They trust each other and that is the end. Again, nothing is actually talked about. Also her personality gave me a whiplash, it was all over the place.
Also there was scene where the police was trying to catch the children and shooting flame bombs at them or something. This bothered me because it certainly didn’t need the violence and it has the potential to be quite triggering for this age group.
Overall I unfortunately didn’t quite enjoy this sequel like I did the first book.