Scan barcode
A review by readerpants
Cold Magic by Kate Elliott
1.0
I feel like the internet really let me down on this one! I trust the Book Smugglers to guide hours of my reading life, and that's usually a good decision, but man, did this shake my faith. (Although I had in my head that they'd said this was a surefire winner for fans of complex and smart worldbuilding a la N.K. Jemisin... and I may have just made that up in my head or read it elsewhere because I can't find it now. So I probably have no one to blame but myself. Darn.)
This book was a hot mess. Sloppy world-building, clunky but totally ineffectual infodumps, flat characters and some really bizarre insta-love. Maybe if there could have been some thorough info-dumping in the beginning, we could have spent the rest of the book focusing on the characters... but doling out information in odd, vague little monologues left some plot points irritatingly obvious and others irritatingly confusing. Lots of potential and interesting concepts, but this book badly needed an editor.
This book was a hot mess. Sloppy world-building, clunky but totally ineffectual infodumps, flat characters and some really bizarre insta-love. Maybe if there could have been some thorough info-dumping in the beginning, we could have spent the rest of the book focusing on the characters... but doling out information in odd, vague little monologues left some plot points irritatingly obvious and others irritatingly confusing. Lots of potential and interesting concepts, but this book badly needed an editor.