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kathoulhu 's review for:
The Exiled Queen
by Cinda Williams Chima
The Exiled Queen is the second (I stand corrected!) in the Seven Realms trilogy, and while I found it a great read, I didn't find it as gripping as Demon King, primarily because the characters seemed less firey and vivid -- more like water-color versions of themselves.
The characters are all there, and we get to find out what happened to them, but I found some of the relationships less compelling this time around. In Demon King, the tension between Han and Micah was so fierce and real, and I found it somewhat stilted in this book, for no apparent reason. I would have thought it would be moreso, now that Han nearly killed Micah's father. I also disliked the Crow character -- a bit of mystery surrounding a character is intriguing, but because we only meet Crow in the Aediion dream-world, I found Crow completely flat and devoid of interest. The fact that he was using Han, and possessing him, seemed on the one hand completely obvious, but there were so many irritating loose ends (like why was he possessing him? where did he go during those lost hours?) -- I wanted a reckoning between them (and to find out who s/he was, and why they could teach magic, but not use it).
I still liked Raisa, and her fumbling around, trying to find love, first with Amon, then with Han, was compelling. I found Amon much flatter in Exiled Queen -- clearly, the binding has done much to him, but I don't know that it's improved him for the better. When their relationship ended, he didn't seem like much of a loss, so it was difficult to feel sympathy for Raisa's tears. She also kind of latched onto Han pretty quickly thereafter, so it made you wonder if she ever really felt anything for Amon at all -- or if Han will just be some serious rebound material.
I'm being nitpicky, and on the whole, I loved the story, and getting to see the characters relationships develop, and I'm on pins and needles for book three... I'm hoping that, for the fight for Raisa, the characters throw off their reticence and go out in a blaze of glory.
The characters are all there, and we get to find out what happened to them, but I found some of the relationships less compelling this time around. In Demon King, the tension between Han and Micah was so fierce and real, and I found it somewhat stilted in this book, for no apparent reason. I would have thought it would be moreso, now that Han nearly killed Micah's father. I also disliked the Crow character -- a bit of mystery surrounding a character is intriguing, but because we only meet Crow in the Aediion dream-world, I found Crow completely flat and devoid of interest. The fact that he was using Han, and possessing him, seemed on the one hand completely obvious, but there were so many irritating loose ends (like why was he possessing him? where did he go during those lost hours?) -- I wanted a reckoning between them (and to find out who s/he was, and why they could teach magic, but not use it).
I still liked Raisa, and her fumbling around, trying to find love, first with Amon, then with Han, was compelling. I found Amon much flatter in Exiled Queen -- clearly, the binding has done much to him, but I don't know that it's improved him for the better. When their relationship ended, he didn't seem like much of a loss, so it was difficult to feel sympathy for Raisa's tears. She also kind of latched onto Han pretty quickly thereafter, so it made you wonder if she ever really felt anything for Amon at all -- or if Han will just be some serious rebound material.
I'm being nitpicky, and on the whole, I loved the story, and getting to see the characters relationships develop, and I'm on pins and needles for book three... I'm hoping that, for the fight for Raisa, the characters throw off their reticence and go out in a blaze of glory.