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A review by courtknee_bee
The Great Hunt by Wendy Higgins
2.0
1.5 stars
Royalty romances can be really hit and miss for me. I unabashedly want to be a princess, and although that will never happen, it may or may not be what I dream about at night as I try to fall asleep. Thanks to Disney, royalty romances are inherently cheesy, if nothing else because they present an idealized form of monarchy, usually overlooking the arranged marriage, politics and powerlessness of women. But that’s fine. When I pick up a royalty romance, I’m usually seeking the cheese and embrace it. Wendy Higgins' The Great Hunt, however, was just too simple to be truly adored.
According to the author, this is a retelling of “The Singing Bone,” a fairy tale I’ve never heard of before. Princess Aerity’s water kingdom is under attack by a strange, bear-like beast. In an effort to attract the best hunters from across the many kingdoms of Eurona, her father promises her hand in marriage to anyone who can slay the beast. Commoner Paxton and his brother join the hunt, although at first Paxton can’t be sussed about the princess. But not everyone is as they seem, and the stakes continue to rise as more and more men are picked off by the great beast.
My biggest complaint with this book is just how simple everything is, from the writing to the characterization. I’m not familiar with Higgins' style, but the sentence structure and writing really read more like a middle-grade book to me. Higgins doesn’t do much description, which is a shame because there’s some really great moments here that could be brought to live with the right words.
Take, for example, this description of Aerity's mother doing trapeze work with silks:
What a missed opportunity, right? If you’ve ever seen anyone aerial dance, the you know how fluid and beautiful it can be. This description doesn’t give the reader any of that. It uses technical terms that are really hard to envision by someone without these skills.
The world building feels very simplified. Eurona is made up of five kingdoms that apparently have extremely different climates despite being within easy traveling distance of one another? Lochlanach, the Waterlands, Ascomanni, the Coldlands, Toresta, the Ridgelands, Kalor, the Hotlands, and Zorfina, the Drylands. My ARC doesn't have a map in it yet, so maybe I'm not understanding the geography, but the book makes it seem as if these lands are all very near each other. Predictably, everyone's last name seems to correspond with their country. We meet lots of characters in the Waterlands with last names like "Seabolt," "Sandbar" and "Riverton."
The romance is also incredibly disappointing. When I pick up a royalty romance, I’m looking for the cheese factor. I had such good expectations for this novel, too, because my favorite type of romance is the enemies-turned-lovers plot. Although Paxton starts out deliciously jerky, he never improves. He’s just a straight-up dick to Aerity the entire plot of the novel, yet somehow she immediately falls for him? It makes no sense. Check out this exchange:
Charming. The “justification” is that he can’t be with her so he’s trying to scare her off, yet he even admits that he takes it farther than he needs to just to mess with her. What? And although Aerity usually stomps off after Paxton's many insulting, degrading exchanges, she seems to always forget about the exchange entirely the next time she sees him without ever getting an apology or justification.
What this book does manage to do decently well is the plot, and in particular, the ending. The ending is what really saved this book for me. The plot twists are obvious a mile away, but I wasn’t expecting Higgins to deliver an ending so morally gray. I expected a very black-and-white, this-person-is-bad-and-our-heroine-is-good sort of ending, but it’s actually very easy for the reader to emphasize with the “bad guy” - a nice complexity. Fair warning that this ends in a huge cliffhanger, however, so you’ll have to read the second novel if you want to find out what happens even in a very immediate sense.
Overall this book just didn’t live up to my expectations. If hadn’t received an ARC as a First Reads giveaway (which, by the way, I never win anything so that was exciting), I don’t know that I would have finished it.
Royalty romances can be really hit and miss for me. I unabashedly want to be a princess, and although that will never happen, it may or may not be what I dream about at night as I try to fall asleep. Thanks to Disney, royalty romances are inherently cheesy, if nothing else because they present an idealized form of monarchy, usually overlooking the arranged marriage, politics and powerlessness of women. But that’s fine. When I pick up a royalty romance, I’m usually seeking the cheese and embrace it. Wendy Higgins' The Great Hunt, however, was just too simple to be truly adored.
According to the author, this is a retelling of “The Singing Bone,” a fairy tale I’ve never heard of before. Princess Aerity’s water kingdom is under attack by a strange, bear-like beast. In an effort to attract the best hunters from across the many kingdoms of Eurona, her father promises her hand in marriage to anyone who can slay the beast. Commoner Paxton and his brother join the hunt, although at first Paxton can’t be sussed about the princess. But not everyone is as they seem, and the stakes continue to rise as more and more men are picked off by the great beast.
My biggest complaint with this book is just how simple everything is, from the writing to the characterization. I’m not familiar with Higgins' style, but the sentence structure and writing really read more like a middle-grade book to me. Higgins doesn’t do much description, which is a shame because there’s some really great moments here that could be brought to live with the right words.
Take, for example, this description of Aerity's mother doing trapeze work with silks:
She reclined into a lean and pulled her knees up, repositioning her feet with a glide of the cloth. Her body wound and slid into position with the silks around her waist. Aerity recognized the position of a drop roll. Her mother began to soar downward, and the princess quickly saw that her mother was not stopping the roll soon enough.
What a missed opportunity, right? If you’ve ever seen anyone aerial dance, the you know how fluid and beautiful it can be. This description doesn’t give the reader any of that. It uses technical terms that are really hard to envision by someone without these skills.
The world building feels very simplified. Eurona is made up of five kingdoms that apparently have extremely different climates despite being within easy traveling distance of one another? Lochlanach, the Waterlands, Ascomanni, the Coldlands, Toresta, the Ridgelands, Kalor, the Hotlands, and Zorfina, the Drylands. My ARC doesn't have a map in it yet, so maybe I'm not understanding the geography, but the book makes it seem as if these lands are all very near each other. Predictably, everyone's last name seems to correspond with their country. We meet lots of characters in the Waterlands with last names like "Seabolt," "Sandbar" and "Riverton."
The romance is also incredibly disappointing. When I pick up a royalty romance, I’m looking for the cheese factor. I had such good expectations for this novel, too, because my favorite type of romance is the enemies-turned-lovers plot. Although Paxton starts out deliciously jerky, he never improves. He’s just a straight-up dick to Aerity the entire plot of the novel, yet somehow she immediately falls for him? It makes no sense. Check out this exchange:
To her utter relief he took her hand in his rough, warm one. Paxton then did something that none of the other tables full of men had dared to do. Still holding her hand, he dropped his gaze down to the swell of fabric at her chest, and kept it there too long, his hand tightening and seeming even hotter around hers. Another shocked sound left Wyneth, this one high-pitched. Aerity's chest sizzled under the hunter's heated attention, and she dropped his hand.
In unison, the guards behind her stepped closer, one of them clearing his throat. When Paxton Seabolt's eyes drifted lower across her waist, Princess Aerity refused to cower. She was torn between offense and flattery at the intimate way he took her in with his eyes, perusing at his leisure until Tiern discreetly bumped him with his shoulder.
Charming. The “justification” is that he can’t be with her so he’s trying to scare her off, yet he even admits that he takes it farther than he needs to just to mess with her. What? And although Aerity usually stomps off after Paxton's many insulting, degrading exchanges, she seems to always forget about the exchange entirely the next time she sees him without ever getting an apology or justification.
What this book does manage to do decently well is the plot, and in particular, the ending. The ending is what really saved this book for me. The plot twists are obvious a mile away, but I wasn’t expecting Higgins to deliver an ending so morally gray. I expected a very black-and-white, this-person-is-bad-and-our-heroine-is-good sort of ending, but it’s actually very easy for the reader to emphasize with the “bad guy” - a nice complexity. Fair warning that this ends in a huge cliffhanger, however, so you’ll have to read the second novel if you want to find out what happens even in a very immediate sense.
Overall this book just didn’t live up to my expectations. If hadn’t received an ARC as a First Reads giveaway (which, by the way, I never win anything so that was exciting), I don’t know that I would have finished it.