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theresejanosky 's review for:
The Silvered Serpents
by Roshani Chokshi
2.5 stars
huh?
maybe i'm just too dumb for this series.
chokshi can write lovely sentences. she's good at creating ambience and setting the tone. she has a way of making things feel whimsical and mysterious with a bit of a dark undertone. the atmosphere she creates? incredible, amazing, delightful! no complaints.
however, i also had no clue what was going on for most of this.
in my review for [b:The Gilded Wolves|39863498|The Gilded Wolves (The Gilded Wolves, #1)|Roshani Chokshi|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1525714353l/39863498._SY75_.jpg|53547018], i wrote that there is something about the book that is just endlessly confusing. that holds true for this second installment. i still don't fully understand the magic system or the politics of this world. i don't really understand the characters' motivations. i don't know what the final objective of everything is - to become a god? sometimes i even have trouble comprehending and visualising the setting.
the pacing continues to be strange, especially when it comes to severin and laila's povs. their povs basically just consist of them working through their angsty thoughts and contemplating life with no plot development. the characters seem to know and not know things seemingly at random, depending on what works better for the plot. it doesn't feel like the story comes together naturally. the book jumps around from character to character, even in the middle of action scenes, sometimes skipping big chunks of time, and it makes it hard to follow what is happening and how the characters got from one point to another. this is also pretty slow for the most part, until the last 20 pages when all the excitement happens at once and then the book abruptly ends.
i was interested to see where the characters went in this installment because i did like them for the most part and thought they all had interesting potential. however, where they go is nowhere. there is a lot of grief and angst in this book over events from the previous one, which is understandable. however, it does not make for a pleasant reading experience, as none of the characters communicate with each other about the pain they are feeling, instead choosing to shut one another out. severin especially has undergone a dramatic change and is cruel and closed off. his relationship with laila, which was already unnecessarily angsty in my opinion, becomes even more so. hypnos becomes a weird inconsistent character who doesn't fit with the hypnos of the previous book, and zofia and enrique are decent but are still just stuck within their own heads and internal struggles.
i was really hoping this book would build on the first in way that made the story more cohesive and gave it a direction, but unfortunately, it did not. it's hard to say whether i enjoyed reading this or not. i didn't hate it, but i often found myself checking to see how far along i was. i haven't decided if i'll on pick up the final book in the trilogy when it comes out.
huh?
maybe i'm just too dumb for this series.
chokshi can write lovely sentences. she's good at creating ambience and setting the tone. she has a way of making things feel whimsical and mysterious with a bit of a dark undertone. the atmosphere she creates? incredible, amazing, delightful! no complaints.
however, i also had no clue what was going on for most of this.
in my review for [b:The Gilded Wolves|39863498|The Gilded Wolves (The Gilded Wolves, #1)|Roshani Chokshi|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1525714353l/39863498._SY75_.jpg|53547018], i wrote that there is something about the book that is just endlessly confusing. that holds true for this second installment. i still don't fully understand the magic system or the politics of this world. i don't really understand the characters' motivations. i don't know what the final objective of everything is - to become a god? sometimes i even have trouble comprehending and visualising the setting.
Spoiler
every time i thought i had that leviathan thing pinned down it did something that did not make sense with what i was picturing.the pacing continues to be strange, especially when it comes to severin and laila's povs. their povs basically just consist of them working through their angsty thoughts and contemplating life with no plot development. the characters seem to know and not know things seemingly at random, depending on what works better for the plot. it doesn't feel like the story comes together naturally. the book jumps around from character to character, even in the middle of action scenes, sometimes skipping big chunks of time, and it makes it hard to follow what is happening and how the characters got from one point to another. this is also pretty slow for the most part, until the last 20 pages when all the excitement happens at once and then the book abruptly ends.
i was interested to see where the characters went in this installment because i did like them for the most part and thought they all had interesting potential. however, where they go is nowhere. there is a lot of grief and angst in this book over events from the previous one, which is understandable. however, it does not make for a pleasant reading experience, as none of the characters communicate with each other about the pain they are feeling, instead choosing to shut one another out. severin especially has undergone a dramatic change and is cruel and closed off. his relationship with laila, which was already unnecessarily angsty in my opinion, becomes even more so. hypnos becomes a weird inconsistent character who doesn't fit with the hypnos of the previous book, and zofia and enrique are decent but are still just stuck within their own heads and internal struggles.
i was really hoping this book would build on the first in way that made the story more cohesive and gave it a direction, but unfortunately, it did not. it's hard to say whether i enjoyed reading this or not. i didn't hate it, but i often found myself checking to see how far along i was. i haven't decided if i'll on pick up the final book in the trilogy when it comes out.