jestersandpages 's review for:

Let the Sky Fall by Shannon Messenger

1.0

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Well this sucked, a lot. There's very little meat to this and what meat there is is unpleasant, borderline painful, to read.
This is basically a knock off of avatar the last air bender.
Due to the lack of substance and character, this is going to be a shorter review.

Writing/World Building;
Utterly awful. This is filled to the brim with overused tropes, sexism and inconstancies.
It's only saving grace is the fair amount of humour, straight from the very beginning. This stays with the entire book but is often out of place.
The book starts out extremely confusing. Making any sense of it was just impossible for me.
The writing style is quite egotistical as well as if the author feels they're writing some stellar fantasy epic. This would be tolerable if the book wasn't awful.
The pacing is god awful, with everything being either vastly too slow or way to fast. There is no part in the book where the pacing is even passable. How the author managed to screw up pacing so severely I do not know.
The forced romantic connection is forced. Like I know this is a romance but you could at least try to make some chemistry or reason behind it......
4 am is not that early to wake up. I usually wake up around then........
Him revealing himself to a human is the only really decent part.
The author seems afraid to use the language teens actually use. Has the teenage character saying "freaking" and "poop" rather than using big boy words............This would be fine if the book was meant for little kids, but it's not. Due to this and the reallly simplistic writing/story this book feels like it's better suited to a children's chapter book than YA. But honestly, this would be subpar even in the children's section.

Tropes:
This book is a walking example of basically every book trope out there so here's a list of all the tropes I could spot with one read through (I'm not rereading this just to catch any I missed)
* you're the last of your kind
* you must become the ultimate warrior
* villain wants to rule all the four societies
* Heart felt mutual loss talk changes resistant boy's mind
* the girl stutters son boy realises she cares and that changes EVERYTHING
* surprise! you're a future king.
* Stereotypical "guardian angel must tell great secret in time of peril"
* oh i don't believe you, does something weird, now I do believe and that's earth shattering.
* You're the most important person ever.
* the "how can I ever be normal now" "how I long to be the thing I didn't want be now that I'm not human".
* me and parents are a different species so I feel unconnected to them and weird.
* I don't want any of this and when people don't need to be saved I'm done.
* character has horrible nightmare flashbacks that's only purpose is to motivate the plot.
* You can't know the truth.
* i can handle this cause I'm a man and will protect woman
* magical wonder boy is instantly super good and gifted at everything
* regaining lost memeory but refuses to tell anyone
* but i can't kill!
* you must marry special girl
* forbiden love
* i must leave to find myself/peace
* I'll wait for you forever!
* Your changing my son and stealing him from me!
* I'm strong so you can't control me


Characters:
Vane: Main character, he holds a ton of stereotypes towards women. It's pretty annoying. He's flat out sexist and genuinely debates putting a sign that requires women to dress sexy to come in his house........The first thing he thinks up as something to do as king is to make women wear tinier dresses. He makes mental notes to destroy non skimpy clothing so girls will be forced to show more skin.....etc He's also a grade A moron, entitled and a complet jerk. Other people exist purely for him. He gets described as lazy by the book but he's not. Violence makes him phsyically ill.

Audra: Being a guardian is everything but she's completely broken and guilt ridden. She's egotistical, rather cataslismic and depressing. Her perspective is unpleasant to read. Her ending is freaking stupid.

Arella: cruel, sadistic jerk. Her personality randomly changes though so.

Vane's adopted parents: stereotypical over protective parents that's it.

Ending:
Pretty humourous actually. But it's very obvious and expected. The very last chapter real just feels like a slap in the face though. It basically rendered the whole book near pointless.

Cover:
Really eye pleasing and atmospheric. The lighting is really out of place though. The use of windmills is really hamfisted even if it is where everything goes down. The title doesn't fit at all and the font used doesn't fit the book or cover at all.

Over all, this would be better suited for the children's section, it's not worth any effort to read, and has no place being a series.