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A review by vivaldi
Ruinsong by Julia Ember
2.0
Ruinsong is one of those books that's on my iPad for ages so to fill in some free time yesterday I ended up finishing the whole thing in one sitting. This is a story about taking ownership of one's voice, featuring a decent diversity amongst the characters.
Personally I thought the representation is the bright spot of the book. It's good to see underrepresented individuals featuring in the pages of Ruinsong. It's an opportunity to offer readers a fresh new perspective of seeing the world. Another thing that intrigued me was the central theme about taking ownership of one's personal narratives & knowing one's worth, though I must admit that the overall execution of the ideas was kind of a let down.
While I can see that the central theme floats around throughout Ruinsong, overall the writing didn't particularly work for me: poor pacing / plot, incomplete worldbuilding, and not very likeable characters. My biggest concern is the incoherence coming from weak worldbuilding that leads to shaky storytelling: I wasn't given enough contextual materials to properly patch together Cadence and Remi's characterisations. Because of the underdeveloped storytelling, I didn't feel sold into the promised sapphic enemies to lovers romance at all.
Adding to the grievance is the atrociously crafted villains i.e. Elene and Ren. I think their characterisation just reflects the overly simplistic worldbuilding. I must say that it wasn't hard for me to predict the ending. Overall the plot is just very predictable and generic YA.
To summarise, I think Ruinsong has the potential (good representation which could had been a good opportunity to give some smart twists to the enemies to lovers trope) but overall I thought the writing is poorly executed.
N.B. Content warnings include: emotional blackmail, violence, drowning, abuse, vomiting, weapons, blood mention, and gaslighting
Personally I thought the representation is the bright spot of the book. It's good to see underrepresented individuals featuring in the pages of Ruinsong. It's an opportunity to offer readers a fresh new perspective of seeing the world. Another thing that intrigued me was the central theme about taking ownership of one's personal narratives & knowing one's worth, though I must admit that the overall execution of the ideas was kind of a let down.
While I can see that the central theme floats around throughout Ruinsong, overall the writing didn't particularly work for me: poor pacing / plot, incomplete worldbuilding, and not very likeable characters. My biggest concern is the incoherence coming from weak worldbuilding that leads to shaky storytelling: I wasn't given enough contextual materials to properly patch together Cadence and Remi's characterisations. Because of the underdeveloped storytelling, I didn't feel sold into the promised sapphic enemies to lovers romance at all.
Adding to the grievance is the atrociously crafted villains i.e. Elene and Ren. I think their characterisation just reflects the overly simplistic worldbuilding. I must say that it wasn't hard for me to predict the ending. Overall the plot is just very predictable and generic YA.
To summarise, I think Ruinsong has the potential (good representation which could had been a good opportunity to give some smart twists to the enemies to lovers trope) but overall I thought the writing is poorly executed.
N.B. Content warnings include: emotional blackmail, violence, drowning, abuse, vomiting, weapons, blood mention, and gaslighting