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A review by bonza
Maker's Curse by Trudi Canavan
2.0
Compared to the previous three books in the Millenium’s Rule series, I was pretty disappointed with this one. It wasn’t a bad read, and the writing is at its strongest when the story focusses on the romance between Rielle and Tyen, and I enjoyed Tyen’s return to his home world and becoming the Academy’s director. However, the main antagonist was boring and the threat of the war machines to the world was not that interesting. It also feels like the book was very rushed and not planned out very well. There were two chapters towards the end of the book that were labelled as Rielle chapters but were obviously written from Tyen’s perspective.
Maker’s Curse is the title of the book but I feel like barely any time was spent on it. You would think “well at least the pages that weren’t spent on the Maker’s Curse was spent on developing the villain” but that’s not true either. We only hear vaguely of Kettin’s exploits for most of the book, and we don’t meet her until well towards the end. By the time she’s eventually killed when Rielle severs the place between worlds, I still don’t know anything about her as it’s only the second actual scene where she’s present. Her motivation makes no sense. She wants to rid the worlds of magic because she believes that magic is harmful to people, but she does this by massacring entire worlds with her machines, and then stripping those worlds of their resources to make more machines to do the same thing to other worlds. Kerrin is just not a believable villain. She doesn’t have the same presence or energy that Valhan had in the previous books.
I think the book would have been better written with a different antagonist and a different threat. The most obvious option to me is Leratia itself. The way it was set up in Thief’s Magic - a pervasive empire that oppresses the nations it conquers and the lower classes of people within it - I was excited for Tyen’s world to be restored by Rielle only for it to begin attempting to conquer other worlds to expand the empire of Leratia. I even had hope that Kilraker would return as a major antagonist since his demise as the end of Thief’s Magic was vague and unconfirmed. It just feels like all the potential of returning to Leratia was wasted. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the Leratia content we got in this book, but it could’ve been so much more interesting if the Emperor wasn’t immediately on Tyen’s side and if it was used as the major threat I thought it was set up to be.
The actual Maker’s Curse should have been so much more relevant to the story. Rielle spends no time researching it, delegating that task entirely to Annad. He manages to find it on his own, but by that time it hadn’t been mentioned for like half the book. I did like that the Scroll of the Ancients, where the curse myth comes from, was found in Leratia. However, when Rielle undergoes her transformation to become an Ancient, I really didn’t like that she just knew how to sever the connection between worlds right when she needed it. No training or practice needed, she just knows how to do it. Granted, the book was coming to an end so there had to be a solution to the problem of Kettin, but that speaks to how rushed this books was (or that it seemed to be to me). And then she just knows how to link worlds again at the end with no work. It’s so unsatisfying.
Overall, I really didn’t like Maker’s Curse as much as the other books in the series. If I had known I was going to be this disappointed by the story then I would have stopped after Successor’s Promise. The ending of that book was actually satisfying, and in my opinion works as a better ending to the series, even with all of the loose plot ends that were supposed to be tied by Maker’s Curse.
Maker’s Curse is the title of the book but I feel like barely any time was spent on it. You would think “well at least the pages that weren’t spent on the Maker’s Curse was spent on developing the villain” but that’s not true either. We only hear vaguely of Kettin’s exploits for most of the book, and we don’t meet her until well towards the end. By the time she’s eventually killed when Rielle severs the place between worlds, I still don’t know anything about her as it’s only the second actual scene where she’s present. Her motivation makes no sense. She wants to rid the worlds of magic because she believes that magic is harmful to people, but she does this by massacring entire worlds with her machines, and then stripping those worlds of their resources to make more machines to do the same thing to other worlds. Kerrin is just not a believable villain. She doesn’t have the same presence or energy that Valhan had in the previous books.
I think the book would have been better written with a different antagonist and a different threat. The most obvious option to me is Leratia itself. The way it was set up in Thief’s Magic - a pervasive empire that oppresses the nations it conquers and the lower classes of people within it - I was excited for Tyen’s world to be restored by Rielle only for it to begin attempting to conquer other worlds to expand the empire of Leratia. I even had hope that Kilraker would return as a major antagonist since his demise as the end of Thief’s Magic was vague and unconfirmed. It just feels like all the potential of returning to Leratia was wasted. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the Leratia content we got in this book, but it could’ve been so much more interesting if the Emperor wasn’t immediately on Tyen’s side and if it was used as the major threat I thought it was set up to be.
The actual Maker’s Curse should have been so much more relevant to the story. Rielle spends no time researching it, delegating that task entirely to Annad. He manages to find it on his own, but by that time it hadn’t been mentioned for like half the book. I did like that the Scroll of the Ancients, where the curse myth comes from, was found in Leratia. However, when Rielle undergoes her transformation to become an Ancient, I really didn’t like that she just knew how to sever the connection between worlds right when she needed it. No training or practice needed, she just knows how to do it. Granted, the book was coming to an end so there had to be a solution to the problem of Kettin, but that speaks to how rushed this books was (or that it seemed to be to me). And then she just knows how to link worlds again at the end with no work. It’s so unsatisfying.
Overall, I really didn’t like Maker’s Curse as much as the other books in the series. If I had known I was going to be this disappointed by the story then I would have stopped after Successor’s Promise. The ending of that book was actually satisfying, and in my opinion works as a better ending to the series, even with all of the loose plot ends that were supposed to be tied by Maker’s Curse.