A review by samandthebookstack
A Monsoon Rising by Thea Guanzon

slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes

3.5

I love Thea Guanzon. I've been reading her work since the fan fiction days and have voraciously consumed everything I could that she has written. I really liked The Hurricane Wars. I felt that it set us up for a very interesting story that gave plenty of nods to the original inspiration (which if you weren't aware is a Star Wars fanfic). That said, I didn't love A Monsoon Rising as much as I wanted to. The plot felt stilted at times, even though the writing remained lovely. We got a lot of development with regard to the relationship between Alaric and Talasyn, there was some spice and a lot of push and pull and banter between the two of them, however I felt like all of this was overshadowed by the story dragging at some points. The stakes were supposed to be very high, but it simply didn't feel that way. I remained completely unattached to the side characters as well. I had to stop and let one or two chapters simmer for a while before I picked the book back up again so it ended up taking me a while to finish this. The ending did catch me off guard, so be warned there's a cliffhanger. Despite all of the things that I didn't love about A Monsoon Rising, I do think it is overall a good series thus far, and given that I know what kind of writer Thea is, I have faith that book 3 will knock my socks off.