Take a photo of a barcode or cover
telthor 's review for:
Long May She Reign
by Rhiannon Thomas
Such a sorrowful disappointment. The premise--girl becomes queen unexpectedly after the ENTIRE COURT is mass murdered--was fascinating, and people have been giving it lots of praise in publishing magazines. And the premise was as good as hoped, but the execution. Ohhh no.
So, it starts agonizingly slow, with lots of information dumps about why she's a clever scientist. Then, the murders, and the book is a riotous joy to read for a good, long while, until about halfway through when we realize the slow pacing is going to maintain for the rest of the book.
It's too tame. It takes on great ideas. It's about a girl with social anxiety (kind of...for about ten pages, and then she forgets she has it), it's about mass murders (awesome, but handled so lightly that it doesn't have much heartfelt impact), it's about politics (in the kindest, quietest court ever, and extremely trustworthy apparently since it's cool with untested food trays wandering up to the new queen after everyone else was poisoned), it's about religion (but hardly developed), it's about listening to the common people (...kind of. She goes to an orphanage and one cult meeting and then everyone loves her pretty much).
The first half of the book (twenty pages in, at least, once the murders happen) is great. She's lost and confused and scared. She's trying out her rule, and the people are being abused by her decisions because she's so uninformed, and that's great. There's interesting conflict between herself and her court. But then the pace creaks to a shuddering halt around the time when Stern accuses her and rebels--which should be interesting, and yet...isn't.
The romance was unnecessary and pointless, appearing halfway along and filled with "but does he LIKE me like me, or just like me" conversations and pages upon pages analyzing a kiss. Just let them be friends, yo.
The villain was disappointingly anticlimactic, and the resolution was just miserably bad--yeah, sure, do that to your MASS MURDERING villain, that won't bite you in the butt later or anything, nooooo, just because the villain was "nice" to you. Good grief.
Lost potential. I am sad. I wanted to like you, book, but I've read too much good fantasy.
So, it starts agonizingly slow, with lots of information dumps about why she's a clever scientist. Then, the murders, and the book is a riotous joy to read for a good, long while, until about halfway through when we realize the slow pacing is going to maintain for the rest of the book.
It's too tame. It takes on great ideas. It's about a girl with social anxiety (kind of...for about ten pages, and then she forgets she has it), it's about mass murders (awesome, but handled so lightly that it doesn't have much heartfelt impact), it's about politics (in the kindest, quietest court ever, and extremely trustworthy apparently since it's cool with untested food trays wandering up to the new queen after everyone else was poisoned), it's about religion (but hardly developed), it's about listening to the common people (...kind of. She goes to an orphanage and one cult meeting and then everyone loves her pretty much).
The first half of the book (twenty pages in, at least, once the murders happen) is great. She's lost and confused and scared. She's trying out her rule, and the people are being abused by her decisions because she's so uninformed, and that's great. There's interesting conflict between herself and her court. But then the pace creaks to a shuddering halt around the time when Stern accuses her and rebels--which should be interesting, and yet...isn't.
The romance was unnecessary and pointless, appearing halfway along and filled with "but does he LIKE me like me, or just like me" conversations and pages upon pages analyzing a kiss. Just let them be friends, yo.
The villain was disappointingly anticlimactic, and the resolution was just miserably bad--yeah, sure, do that to your MASS MURDERING villain, that won't bite you in the butt later or anything, nooooo, just because the villain was "nice" to you. Good grief.
Lost potential. I am sad. I wanted to like you, book, but I've read too much good fantasy.