A review by hanxanth
The Waking Land by Callie Bates

adventurous emotional inspiring mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

I realized I had left this book sitting by my bed with about 60 pages left, and had forgotten about it as I proceeded to read and finish about 10 other books. That's how invested I was in this story. I picked it up because I was really looking for some magic that was nature-based/druidic and the blurb on this story seemed to hit the mark. And the beginning started off strong, getting me invested in the characters and the politics. 

But about half way through, things started to go down hill. The book actively reminds us of El's title (as if we could forget) and how she has to 'wake the land'. We know. It's the title of the book. Also the plot seemed to jump around a lot, literally, as we're quickly rushed from place to place without much in-between. This book definitely suffers from the author telling, rather than showing, what's happening. El's character development was also weirdly fast and I didn't buy it. We could have also used a lot more development of the magic system as some of it was just so vague it didn't make sense. And I won't get into the 'wedding the land' thing which was ridiculous. The ending was also ridiculous.

She summons this massive ghost army, AND awakens the land to get it to move, but then everything ends without fighting. I get it, bloodless victory is nice, but we didn't need both the land awakening AND the ghost army to get that to happen. Just one of those plot devices would have served the purpose.

 

So, it started off good, got really jumpy and confusing, and I ended up forgetting to finish it until today. I will not be picking up the next one.