Take a photo of a barcode or cover
chaiteatea 's review for:
Heir of Storms
by Lauryn Hamilton Murray
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC! All opinions in this review are my own.
1.5 stars. DNF'd at 50%/C25.
The synopsis promises so much and then quickly fails to deliver after an exciting beginning before falling into a gaping hole no one can climb out of.
Let me just start with the most egregious thing, any type of slavery as a world-building point needs to be handled with nuance and care especially with making the FMC a noble and the two love interest MMCs royals all of whom clearly benefit from this system. This novel definitely did not have any type of mindfulness about this. I also fall to see why slavery was added into the story to begin with other than feeling like it was written (poorly I might add) as a shock value for the sheltered and naive FMC to internally admonish the system but then do nothing externally about it. Oh, and I am not forgetting that one of the MMCs is one of the people that just cheerily goes rounding up slaves and the narrative was pushing how the FMC found him just so hot and confounding and "deary me who will I choose?!"
Let me move onto the characters, the cardboard my resident One Orange Braincell eats up has more dimension than those in this novel. They are so transparent. You have the somehow powerful but also powerless and inexperienced FMC that everyone hates because her birth caused a biblical flood, the "good boy" ray of sunshine love interest #1 who is heir to the throne, and then the aforementioned slaver "bad boy" love interest #2 who also cleaved the world in half when he was 13 and thus killed a bunch of people but everyone either loves him or hates him in equal measure (did I mention he is love interest #1's half bastard brother because of course he is). The rest of the cast is forgettable as they are just there to fill a trope checkbox or in the case of random eccentric old people, sage advice givers that allows the FMC to "aha!" her mental blocks within the next chapter with no real growth or work involved.
Now onto the world-building which was both intriguing but also frustratingly bland in some areas. It is like the author had a bunch of really cool ideas (minus the slavery obviously) but instead of taking the time to weave it together organically and think about how A would interact with B, it felt crammed together with no continuity and left lacking any real substance. Unfortunately the entire novel suffered for this, there was no heart in it and it felt empty.
The plot.... honestly I am not sure what to put here so I'll just summarize the 50% of the book I read. The FMC and her twin have their name day party or something, an eclipse happens which signals the trials in this world (aka leadership change that also doesn't make sense), they travel to the palace because both are now considered heirs to two separate kingdoms, a whole lot of vague training and parties that doesn't feel like it organically goes anywhere, and then the first trial that is over as quickly as it began and was obvious as to what it was going to be from the beginning (but somehow the FMC is shocked by it), and then the love triangle was quickly introduced followed by a kiss with love interest #1 that also had no essence to it due to the lack of real build up between them because all he's done is said some nice words to her and brought her flowers in a narrative that feels like it's trying to speedrun to the finish but can't even get off of the starting line.
All in all, I do not recommend this book.
1.5 stars. DNF'd at 50%/C25.
The synopsis promises so much and then quickly fails to deliver after an exciting beginning before falling into a gaping hole no one can climb out of.
Let me just start with the most egregious thing, any type of slavery as a world-building point needs to be handled with nuance and care especially with making the FMC a noble and the two love interest MMCs royals all of whom clearly benefit from this system. This novel definitely did not have any type of mindfulness about this. I also fall to see why slavery was added into the story to begin with other than feeling like it was written (poorly I might add) as a shock value for the sheltered and naive FMC to internally admonish the system but then do nothing externally about it. Oh, and I am not forgetting that one of the MMCs is one of the people that just cheerily goes rounding up slaves and the narrative was pushing how the FMC found him just so hot and confounding and "deary me who will I choose?!"
Let me move onto the characters, the cardboard my resident One Orange Braincell eats up has more dimension than those in this novel. They are so transparent. You have the somehow powerful but also powerless and inexperienced FMC that everyone hates because her birth caused a biblical flood, the "good boy" ray of sunshine love interest #1 who is heir to the throne, and then the aforementioned slaver "bad boy" love interest #2 who also cleaved the world in half when he was 13 and thus killed a bunch of people but everyone either loves him or hates him in equal measure (did I mention he is love interest #1's half bastard brother because of course he is). The rest of the cast is forgettable as they are just there to fill a trope checkbox or in the case of random eccentric old people, sage advice givers that allows the FMC to "aha!" her mental blocks within the next chapter with no real growth or work involved.
Now onto the world-building which was both intriguing but also frustratingly bland in some areas. It is like the author had a bunch of really cool ideas (minus the slavery obviously) but instead of taking the time to weave it together organically and think about how A would interact with B, it felt crammed together with no continuity and left lacking any real substance. Unfortunately the entire novel suffered for this, there was no heart in it and it felt empty.
The plot.... honestly I am not sure what to put here so I'll just summarize the 50% of the book I read. The FMC and her twin have their name day party or something, an eclipse happens which signals the trials in this world (aka leadership change that also doesn't make sense), they travel to the palace because both are now considered heirs to two separate kingdoms, a whole lot of vague training and parties that doesn't feel like it organically goes anywhere, and then the first trial that is over as quickly as it began and was obvious as to what it was going to be from the beginning (but somehow the FMC is shocked by it), and then the love triangle was quickly introduced followed by a kiss with love interest #1 that also had no essence to it due to the lack of real build up between them because all he's done is said some nice words to her and brought her flowers in a narrative that feels like it's trying to speedrun to the finish but can't even get off of the starting line.
All in all, I do not recommend this book.