A review by sphynxreads
Lulu Sinagtala and the City of Noble Warriors by Gail D. Villanueva

adventurous fast-paced

2.5

I received a digital ARC of this book via NetGalley through the author in exchange for an honest review.

Not gonna lie, so much about this book did not work for me. 

I didn't like how much of a Percy Jackson ripoff the first quarter was. You can literally map out comparisons between this book and the Lightning Thief even down to one of the chapter titles. It didn't feel organic or even like a nod to honor Riordan's work. It straight up felt like cheap fanfic.

I also found the main character insufferably annoying. Lulu doesn't have much character development but at the same time she is also unbelievably inconsistent. One moment she will act childish even for her age and then the next she will say something with the awareness of an adult. Many of the other characters' lines of dialogue also did not feel realistic, including the ones spoken in Filipino. In many ways, this book felt like it was written for Western middle-graders in mind rather than for Filipino ones. The unapologetic Filipino-ness was one of the things I loved about Sugar and Spite, and I'm sad to see that I didn't get that here. Don't get me wrong, there is a lot of Filipino culture referenced here, but it feels almost as if it was tweaked to appeal to a Western audience.

I also thought the pop culture references were a little cringe and repetitive. I mean, take a shot whenever "BTS's Jungkook and Blackpink's Rosé" is mentioned and you won't get drunk, but you shouldn't drive yourself home either.

The pacing was also irregularly fast. We aren't given time to really absorb certain events and some of the more emotional moments don't really feel earned.

There were also quite a number of errors in the pronunciation guide at the end of the book and, as someone who enjoyed his linguistics class in uni, this bothered me to no end.

All that said, I am still interested in how the story turns out in the sequel mainly because of how much I liked the ending scenes. To me, that was when the magic truly began. We are given higher stakes, intriguing plot twists, and the main character was forced to be more grounded.

All in all this was a bit of a miss for me, but I'm still glad to have read it.