leilanilibrary 's review for:

Of Mountains and Seas by Emily Renk Hawthorne
3.0
adventurous challenging emotional tense fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I was hooked originally by the cover, which is absolutely gorgeous. I thought the representation of Chinese mythology was really well done and had such great stories interspersed in the characters. 

For me, I think the multi-POV along with all of the time jumps was super disorienting for the first part of the novel. I don’t think it gave ample opportunity for enough character building with this many POVs, and a character arc at the end doesn’t make sense because of this.

I did think a lot of the dialogue was very impersonal. There would be parts where someone was like, “well, I should just let them die because they killed so and so”, which just seemed weird at the passiveness of the dialogue. 

I think if this is improved on for the sequel, I would definitely rate it higher. I do love the idea for this novel.