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babainadoesnotread 's review for:
Malice
by Heather Walter
I do not have much experience with retellings and the little I have did not go so well so this was an interesting read for me.
Retelling: it’s basically the story told from malificients pov it’s pretty similar to the Angelina jolie movie in the aspect that Alyce (the malificient in this story) grows to love aurora…except the movie maintained the mother daughter relationship. The princess and witch be fucking over here.
World building: okay I’m sorry but this was done awfully. Within the first few chapters there’s just a shit ton of info dumping and long long stories told in between dialogues I feel like a lot of it could have been more spaced out throughout the story instead of being thrusted upon me like that.
The world: okay the world building was awful but that does not mean I found the world terrible. The authors take on graces and changing the curse to: the princess will die if she’s not kissed her one true love by twenty one was interesting to read about. Also I love how the author has taken several elements of the magical ans fae world and get creative with it at certain aspects. The part about dozens of suitors kissing aurora all the time to figure out if they’re the true love made me cringe at first but then I realised oh wait…that’s literally exactly what would happen though.
The dialogue: it was nothing special I think it could’ve been better it was just terribly executed.
Plot (spoilers): up till the very end the plot was predictable. Like with kal as soon as he came in the picture it was easy to guess he’d be evil. Same with laurel. And the whole reveal of “hahaha Ive been bad all along” made me groan.
Villain: I feel like good books fantasy especially need good complex villains. We don’t get that here all too much. Tarkin is your standard moustache twirling villain.
He tortures good guys shit to his wife wanted his daughters dead all along. At one point there is,
“That’s what you want. To live forever?”
“To rule forever,” Tarkin says.
Here is where my rating began to drop. I made an annotation here;
Here a book idea for the sequel
He wins.
He gets to rule forever.
But I wanna see him getting bored of ruling forever.
Like endless endless endless and eternity of non stop never ending ruling.
I want to see what happens after a hundred years of it, then a thousand, then ten thousand, million and a billion years of ruling. I want to see what this man does after one billion years of ruling because even then he’s still not achieved a fraction of forever.
Don’t blame me, I was done at this point with the shallow villains.
I suppose however one can say that he is not the sole villain. As a whole the entirety of briar save for aurora is cruel to Alyce. It’s the whole society, the little jabs she receives and the general discrimination that she faces that forces her to ultimately snap. And looking at it from that aspect…it still feels like the whole burning down of kings Landin— sorry I mean burning down of Briar was super rushed. Like within a matter of hours she goes from “no I won’t let you do burn it all, you villain” to “light em up! Up! Up!”
Villain origin story/Alyce: Now what is more curious is the whole turning into a villain of Alyce. She’s berated. Auroras cursed. There’s voices in her head. So she snaps. But it still feels so inconsistent with the character. I HATED Alyce. She is so annoying throughout the story. She is capricious, whiny, delusional and takes so so many leaps of logic all in the name of plot. Her opinions of people shift jarringly easily. Quite frankly the only person she seems really committed to it her bird because she immediately believes aurora has betrayed her at a slight mishap while claiming to be in love with her at the same time.
But at the same time, I am a sucker for the burn it all to the ground trope so I ate the entire ending up. The aforementioned point I’ve completely overlooked in giving my rating.
Characters: help there isn’t a single good male character in this book help
Retelling: it’s basically the story told from malificients pov it’s pretty similar to the Angelina jolie movie in the aspect that Alyce (the malificient in this story) grows to love aurora…except the movie maintained the mother daughter relationship. The princess and witch be fucking over here.
World building: okay I’m sorry but this was done awfully. Within the first few chapters there’s just a shit ton of info dumping and long long stories told in between dialogues I feel like a lot of it could have been more spaced out throughout the story instead of being thrusted upon me like that.
The world: okay the world building was awful but that does not mean I found the world terrible. The authors take on graces and changing the curse to: the princess will die if she’s not kissed her one true love by twenty one was interesting to read about. Also I love how the author has taken several elements of the magical ans fae world and get creative with it at certain aspects. The part about dozens of suitors kissing aurora all the time to figure out if they’re the true love made me cringe at first but then I realised oh wait…that’s literally exactly what would happen though.
The dialogue: it was nothing special I think it could’ve been better it was just terribly executed.
Plot (spoilers): up till the very end the plot was predictable. Like with kal as soon as he came in the picture it was easy to guess he’d be evil. Same with laurel. And the whole reveal of “hahaha Ive been bad all along” made me groan.
Villain: I feel like good books fantasy especially need good complex villains. We don’t get that here all too much. Tarkin is your standard moustache twirling villain.
He tortures good guys shit to his wife wanted his daughters dead all along. At one point there is,
“That’s what you want. To live forever?”
“To rule forever,” Tarkin says.
Here is where my rating began to drop. I made an annotation here;
Here a book idea for the sequel
He wins.
He gets to rule forever.
But I wanna see him getting bored of ruling forever.
Like endless endless endless and eternity of non stop never ending ruling.
I want to see what happens after a hundred years of it, then a thousand, then ten thousand, million and a billion years of ruling. I want to see what this man does after one billion years of ruling because even then he’s still not achieved a fraction of forever.
Don’t blame me, I was done at this point with the shallow villains.
I suppose however one can say that he is not the sole villain. As a whole the entirety of briar save for aurora is cruel to Alyce. It’s the whole society, the little jabs she receives and the general discrimination that she faces that forces her to ultimately snap. And looking at it from that aspect…it still feels like the whole burning down of kings Landin— sorry I mean burning down of Briar was super rushed. Like within a matter of hours she goes from “no I won’t let you do burn it all, you villain” to “light em up! Up! Up!”
Villain origin story/Alyce: Now what is more curious is the whole turning into a villain of Alyce. She’s berated. Auroras cursed. There’s voices in her head. So she snaps. But it still feels so inconsistent with the character. I HATED Alyce. She is so annoying throughout the story. She is capricious, whiny, delusional and takes so so many leaps of logic all in the name of plot. Her opinions of people shift jarringly easily. Quite frankly the only person she seems really committed to it her bird because she immediately believes aurora has betrayed her at a slight mishap while claiming to be in love with her at the same time.
But at the same time, I am a sucker for the burn it all to the ground trope so I ate the entire ending up. The aforementioned point I’ve completely overlooked in giving my rating.
Characters: help there isn’t a single good male character in this book help