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A review by driedfrogpills
The Waking Land by Callie Bates
2.0
Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an e-ARC in exchange for a review!
I really don't know where all the five star reviews are coming from with this book. The premise and the cover were really intriguing. But once I began reading it, very quickly I became frustrated with Elanna, with the revolutionaries, with pretty much everyone in the book; I ended up caring absolutely not one whit about any of them. Also, can we just not with the magic hero trope, you know the one: the main character who's so pivotal to the action and everyone's looking to him/her to be their savior, but the MC hasn't a clue what's going on for so many chapters until *handwave* suddenly they're all for the cause and would never do anything else? Can we just decide we're done with this storyline, we've beaten it to death and we'll try something different from now on?
This book either needed to have less going on, or it needed more fleshing out with the characters. It was like Bates decided to write the bare bones of how the relationships between all the characters should change without giving the more complex/complicated ones the time to breathe and genuinely develop. The writing isn't bad but it's definitely not anywhere near as laudable as others have been saying. The magic parts, while different, weren't very intriguing to me, either, and I was expecting to be grabbed by that from the start.
Overall, The Waking Land feels like yet another YA fantasy novel. Some parts of it have promise, some parts of it were dull as the dirt Elanna's connected to, and some of it we've all read before.
I really don't know where all the five star reviews are coming from with this book. The premise and the cover were really intriguing. But once I began reading it, very quickly I became frustrated with Elanna, with the revolutionaries, with pretty much everyone in the book; I ended up caring absolutely not one whit about any of them. Also, can we just not with the magic hero trope, you know the one: the main character who's so pivotal to the action and everyone's looking to him/her to be their savior, but the MC hasn't a clue what's going on for so many chapters until *handwave* suddenly they're all for the cause and would never do anything else? Can we just decide we're done with this storyline, we've beaten it to death and we'll try something different from now on?
This book either needed to have less going on, or it needed more fleshing out with the characters. It was like Bates decided to write the bare bones of how the relationships between all the characters should change without giving the more complex/complicated ones the time to breathe and genuinely develop.
Spoiler
Don't get me started on the whole waffling about the "is-my-mother-a-traitor" thing. God, that was tedious.Overall, The Waking Land feels like yet another YA fantasy novel. Some parts of it have promise, some parts of it were dull as the dirt Elanna's connected to, and some of it we've all read before.