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leftovergarlicbread 's review for:
Thor's Serpents
by K.L. Armstrong, Melissa Marr
adventurous
funny
hopeful
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I have. Genuinely so so much i could say about this series. This is more my overall review of the whole series more than this book in particular. I've rated every book 5 stars. In therms of actual writing quality, these books are not 5 stars. they are more like 3-3.5 stars. 4 if I'm being generous. But emotionally? 10 stars. Oh my god. This is genuinely one of my favorite series ever. The hyperfixation on this series is REAL and has hit me full force like 3 or 4 separate times. I loved it the first time i read it when i was 13 and I loved it the 3rd time i read it just now, at 20.
Genuinely, I could write ESSAYS about this series and the characters. I love them so so so much. I've gotten way deeper about this series and thought way harder about it than I think the authors ever intended someone to lol. Because despite the honestly kind of mediocre writing, there are so many things that they did SO WELL and SO RIGHT.
I ADORE all of the characters SO MUCH. My favorite is Fen. He is just such an interesting and compelling character to me! That's really what makes me love this series so so much, the characters. I'm an incredibly character-driven person when it comes to media i enjoy. Interesting characters are number one in importance for me. The story does not have to be well-written, and the characters don't even have to be super well written, if there is a solid and interesting character base for me to go off of, I'm hooked.
When it comes to my complaints, they are mostly with the character relationships and plot development. The plot of the books moves very very fast. It makes sense for the pace the story sets, but it almost made things move a little too fast for the characters to truly develop.
It was clear the authors had A LOT they wanted to do with the characters and plot. There are 3 main characters, and 8 characters that are supposed to play major plot-affecting roles. And all of these characters are very interesting!!! They all have inner conflicts and flaws and very real and raw struggles they're dealing with! But due to the speed of the plot, there is hardly enough time to truly explore even the main characters.
Do i think that there should have been another book in the series? No. I think with the speed of the plot another book would have dragged things out way too much. However, I do think that wach book could have used a few more chapters to give us just a little bit more time to explore and get to know the characters and to give their relationships a chance to develop more.
I think really, they should have either scaled back a little bit on the scope of their characters, or found a way to slow down the plot to give themselves the time they needed. It just felt like they were trying to do too much in too little time.
I think two of the best examples of this, are Laurie's fish abilities, and just the twins, but especially Ray, in general. Laurie's fish transformation powers are something we are truly introduced to in the 3rd book after them getting sort of hinted at in the first. They come up kind of without warning, it's said that her ability is ultra rare, and then they never use it for anything. The only other time it ever gets brought up is for a quip in the very end of the series, making it this super interesting detail, that really was just completely unnecessary and served no purpose. And that's a real shame, because I feel that they could have done something really really interesting with it!!
The twins are again, really wasted potential!! Reyna started getting some real time in the spotlight, in the 3rd book. After being introduced halfway through the first and written out of most of the second. Ray in particular makes me so sad with how much he really got forgotten. Same as Reyna, he was only present for part of the first book, was written out of most of the second, yet unlike Reyna, who started getting some time in the 3rd book, HE ALSO GOT WRITTEN OUT OF MOST OF THE 3RD!!!
Ray doesn't pass that one test where it's like, character could be replaced with a fancy lamp and the plot wouldn't really change, I'm sorry. He really doesn't do almost ANYTHING. He's pretty much just Reyna's shadow for the entire series. Which is such a shame!! because even that point along with many other little threads dropped around him could have led to some really interesting stuff with him! I really don't know him at all!! He gets so little time even on-page despite the fact that he is suppsed to be one of the major players in the conflict!! And i get not every character getting as much time as the main character, but it would have been nice to hear from him for more than like 50 pages total across 3 300 page books.
I could talk a lot about the missed character development that could have happened between various characters, but I won't go too in-depth into that because it doesn't feel entirely necessary to the review. Just know that I have opinions. I will give one brief example in that there were lots of little things dropped at a very potential friendship between Ray and Fen. GOD i wish those two got a real moment together. Also the parallels between the Brekkes and the twins are SO POTENT and i wish those got explored.
My one real Serious complaint with the book is how it handles the sexism of it's characters. We mostly see it from Matt and Fen towards Laurie, very much the stereotypical preteen boy "you should stay out of the fight because you're a girl, you can't do x y and z as well because you're a girl" which, as a pre-character development flaw, i feel is reasonable and honestly kind of good! These two characters are 13 year old boys living in a small Midwestern town in South Dakota. It's reasonable that they might have some questionable views on boys vs girls.
And we see this sexism negatively impact Laurie throughout the story, we see how it undermines her own confidence in herself, and also strains her relationships with the two she is supposed to be working with. We see in her POV chapters how much she hates it and it frustrates her. She even stands up to them and tells them she doesn't like it! She doesn't take their nonsense sitting!
Despite this, Matt and Fen never really face any real repercussions for their views. Matt does kind of naturally resolve it throughout the story and the characters he ends up getting closer to, but he never has to face any real consequences for what he said and acted like before the development. Fen doesn't even really seem to fully learn the same lesson, still holding pretty much the same ideals as in the beginning. And i find it really frustrating how this was something that was shown to be causing issues between characters and was a real negative flaw the characters shared, but then it just, never really got properly addressed. And i find that to be disappointing.
But onto what I enjoyed!! As I said earlier, the characters. Even if their development was kind of weak, the characters themselves are INCREDIBLY interesting and fun. They all have very distinct personalities and struggles, that all lead to creating interesting and realistic characters despite the fantastical elements of the books and their lives. It makes it so that even if the books don't really utilize them much, there's plenty for me to go off of and think about the characters myself.
One thing i did really appreciate about the books, is the shockingly sympathetic and real handling of the characters who are "bad kids". Namely, Fen and the Raiders. Fen in particular I can talk a lot about here. He is very quickly established to be a "bad kid"; he's introduced in Matt's POV as a rude bully who picks fights and is always in trouble. It's also quickly established that is home life absolutely sucks. It is never explicitly stated as such in the books, which adds a little bit of this unreliable narrator to the books that I REALLY enjoyed, but Fen is a child abuse victim.
Neither of Fen's parents are present and seemingly haven't been for awhile. His dad is in jail and its hinted that his mom just straight up abandoned him. He's spent most of his life functionally homeless, essentially couch surfing between different relatives who range from in his words: "unwelcoming to semi-tolerant". He very casually and neutrally mentions things like getting hit by the adults he lives with, being very obviously neglected, and having had many experiences with adults in his life not caring about his feelings on anything.
These two things, Fen being mean, and Fen being abused, are introduced one after the other. They don't pull the trope where Character A is an asshole for seemingly no reason until their ~tragic backstory reveal~ and suddenly them being mean and rude and a bully is okay because they were "secretly hurting the whole time". We are introduced to Fen with the actions and the cause very quickly.
Fen is introduced as this mean bully, but when we get to his perspective we are met with a deeply insecure and achingly lonely kid with no friends and no support system. However, this is never used to excuse Fen's actions. We see Laurie try to use these factors to excuse Fen's actions, mostly to herself, but the actual story doesn't. Other characters call Fen out on his shit. Baldwin straight up calls him mean to his face. It is reinforced by the story and other characters that Fen's anger, aggression, and general hostility are not good or okay.
And with the Raiders, we first meet them as the antagonists, we meet Skull as this oppressive bully who uses his power to boss people around and have control. And then later on, after Fen has become the Alpha, the two of them have a serious moment where they find similarity in their situations and goals. Skull also just wants to keep his family safe and happy, and desperately wants to get him and all the other Raiders out of their very hard life. They are all homeless! They live in tents in the woods and are constantly on the run from the police because of it!
And this moment is treated so tenderly as a moment of bonding between Fen and Skull and mutual understanding. It's seen as a good thing. Not bad that a protagonist and an antagonist have more in common than they realized.
The Raiders are eventually shown to be just what they are. Homeless kids with no direction, desperate for a better life, who ended up getting manipulated by an adult (Mayor Thorsen) preying on their vulnerability. It doesn't make their actions okay, and that is reinforced by the story and characters, but it makes them sympathetic antagonists in a real and genuine way.
The book shows these "bad kids" as what they are. Kids dealing with shit way bigger than them that they just don't truly understand. They don't understand how bad their situations are, they're just trying to survive. We even get the explicit message stated by Fen : "people often make bad decisions not because they're bad, but because they're scared or angry". And that is SUCH an important message. And it's one that isn't shown with this care and realism as much as it should be. The authors did such a good job of sticking to this ideal throughout the books. Showing the conflict that ideal can truly have when it comes to reacting to someone's actions, when acting on something bigger than them.
I think I am going to wrap this up here before I go even longer than I already have, but genuinely, despite it's flaws, I love this series with my whole entire heart. Fen is literally one of my favorite characters ever of all time, and I can't overstate just how much these books mean to me.
Genuinely, I could write ESSAYS about this series and the characters. I love them so so so much. I've gotten way deeper about this series and thought way harder about it than I think the authors ever intended someone to lol. Because despite the honestly kind of mediocre writing, there are so many things that they did SO WELL and SO RIGHT.
I ADORE all of the characters SO MUCH. My favorite is Fen. He is just such an interesting and compelling character to me! That's really what makes me love this series so so much, the characters. I'm an incredibly character-driven person when it comes to media i enjoy. Interesting characters are number one in importance for me. The story does not have to be well-written, and the characters don't even have to be super well written, if there is a solid and interesting character base for me to go off of, I'm hooked.
When it comes to my complaints, they are mostly with the character relationships and plot development. The plot of the books moves very very fast. It makes sense for the pace the story sets, but it almost made things move a little too fast for the characters to truly develop.
It was clear the authors had A LOT they wanted to do with the characters and plot. There are 3 main characters, and 8 characters that are supposed to play major plot-affecting roles. And all of these characters are very interesting!!! They all have inner conflicts and flaws and very real and raw struggles they're dealing with! But due to the speed of the plot, there is hardly enough time to truly explore even the main characters.
Do i think that there should have been another book in the series? No. I think with the speed of the plot another book would have dragged things out way too much. However, I do think that wach book could have used a few more chapters to give us just a little bit more time to explore and get to know the characters and to give their relationships a chance to develop more.
I think really, they should have either scaled back a little bit on the scope of their characters, or found a way to slow down the plot to give themselves the time they needed. It just felt like they were trying to do too much in too little time.
I think two of the best examples of this, are Laurie's fish abilities, and just the twins, but especially Ray, in general. Laurie's fish transformation powers are something we are truly introduced to in the 3rd book after them getting sort of hinted at in the first. They come up kind of without warning, it's said that her ability is ultra rare, and then they never use it for anything. The only other time it ever gets brought up is for a quip in the very end of the series, making it this super interesting detail, that really was just completely unnecessary and served no purpose. And that's a real shame, because I feel that they could have done something really really interesting with it!!
The twins are again, really wasted potential!! Reyna started getting some real time in the spotlight, in the 3rd book. After being introduced halfway through the first and written out of most of the second. Ray in particular makes me so sad with how much he really got forgotten. Same as Reyna, he was only present for part of the first book, was written out of most of the second, yet unlike Reyna, who started getting some time in the 3rd book, HE ALSO GOT WRITTEN OUT OF MOST OF THE 3RD!!!
Ray doesn't pass that one test where it's like, character could be replaced with a fancy lamp and the plot wouldn't really change, I'm sorry. He really doesn't do almost ANYTHING. He's pretty much just Reyna's shadow for the entire series. Which is such a shame!! because even that point along with many other little threads dropped around him could have led to some really interesting stuff with him! I really don't know him at all!! He gets so little time even on-page despite the fact that he is suppsed to be one of the major players in the conflict!! And i get not every character getting as much time as the main character, but it would have been nice to hear from him for more than like 50 pages total across 3 300 page books.
I could talk a lot about the missed character development that could have happened between various characters, but I won't go too in-depth into that because it doesn't feel entirely necessary to the review. Just know that I have opinions. I will give one brief example in that there were lots of little things dropped at a very potential friendship between Ray and Fen. GOD i wish those two got a real moment together. Also the parallels between the Brekkes and the twins are SO POTENT and i wish those got explored.
My one real Serious complaint with the book is how it handles the sexism of it's characters. We mostly see it from Matt and Fen towards Laurie, very much the stereotypical preteen boy "you should stay out of the fight because you're a girl, you can't do x y and z as well because you're a girl" which, as a pre-character development flaw, i feel is reasonable and honestly kind of good! These two characters are 13 year old boys living in a small Midwestern town in South Dakota. It's reasonable that they might have some questionable views on boys vs girls.
And we see this sexism negatively impact Laurie throughout the story, we see how it undermines her own confidence in herself, and also strains her relationships with the two she is supposed to be working with. We see in her POV chapters how much she hates it and it frustrates her. She even stands up to them and tells them she doesn't like it! She doesn't take their nonsense sitting!
Despite this, Matt and Fen never really face any real repercussions for their views. Matt does kind of naturally resolve it throughout the story and the characters he ends up getting closer to, but he never has to face any real consequences for what he said and acted like before the development. Fen doesn't even really seem to fully learn the same lesson, still holding pretty much the same ideals as in the beginning. And i find it really frustrating how this was something that was shown to be causing issues between characters and was a real negative flaw the characters shared, but then it just, never really got properly addressed. And i find that to be disappointing.
But onto what I enjoyed!! As I said earlier, the characters. Even if their development was kind of weak, the characters themselves are INCREDIBLY interesting and fun. They all have very distinct personalities and struggles, that all lead to creating interesting and realistic characters despite the fantastical elements of the books and their lives. It makes it so that even if the books don't really utilize them much, there's plenty for me to go off of and think about the characters myself.
One thing i did really appreciate about the books, is the shockingly sympathetic and real handling of the characters who are "bad kids". Namely, Fen and the Raiders. Fen in particular I can talk a lot about here. He is very quickly established to be a "bad kid"; he's introduced in Matt's POV as a rude bully who picks fights and is always in trouble. It's also quickly established that is home life absolutely sucks. It is never explicitly stated as such in the books, which adds a little bit of this unreliable narrator to the books that I REALLY enjoyed, but Fen is a child abuse victim.
Neither of Fen's parents are present and seemingly haven't been for awhile. His dad is in jail and its hinted that his mom just straight up abandoned him. He's spent most of his life functionally homeless, essentially couch surfing between different relatives who range from in his words: "unwelcoming to semi-tolerant". He very casually and neutrally mentions things like getting hit by the adults he lives with, being very obviously neglected, and having had many experiences with adults in his life not caring about his feelings on anything.
These two things, Fen being mean, and Fen being abused, are introduced one after the other. They don't pull the trope where Character A is an asshole for seemingly no reason until their ~tragic backstory reveal~ and suddenly them being mean and rude and a bully is okay because they were "secretly hurting the whole time". We are introduced to Fen with the actions and the cause very quickly.
Fen is introduced as this mean bully, but when we get to his perspective we are met with a deeply insecure and achingly lonely kid with no friends and no support system. However, this is never used to excuse Fen's actions. We see Laurie try to use these factors to excuse Fen's actions, mostly to herself, but the actual story doesn't. Other characters call Fen out on his shit. Baldwin straight up calls him mean to his face. It is reinforced by the story and other characters that Fen's anger, aggression, and general hostility are not good or okay.
And with the Raiders, we first meet them as the antagonists, we meet Skull as this oppressive bully who uses his power to boss people around and have control. And then later on, after Fen has become the Alpha, the two of them have a serious moment where they find similarity in their situations and goals. Skull also just wants to keep his family safe and happy, and desperately wants to get him and all the other Raiders out of their very hard life. They are all homeless! They live in tents in the woods and are constantly on the run from the police because of it!
And this moment is treated so tenderly as a moment of bonding between Fen and Skull and mutual understanding. It's seen as a good thing. Not bad that a protagonist and an antagonist have more in common than they realized.
The Raiders are eventually shown to be just what they are. Homeless kids with no direction, desperate for a better life, who ended up getting manipulated by an adult (Mayor Thorsen) preying on their vulnerability. It doesn't make their actions okay, and that is reinforced by the story and characters, but it makes them sympathetic antagonists in a real and genuine way.
The book shows these "bad kids" as what they are. Kids dealing with shit way bigger than them that they just don't truly understand. They don't understand how bad their situations are, they're just trying to survive. We even get the explicit message stated by Fen : "people often make bad decisions not because they're bad, but because they're scared or angry". And that is SUCH an important message. And it's one that isn't shown with this care and realism as much as it should be. The authors did such a good job of sticking to this ideal throughout the books. Showing the conflict that ideal can truly have when it comes to reacting to someone's actions, when acting on something bigger than them.
I think I am going to wrap this up here before I go even longer than I already have, but genuinely, despite it's flaws, I love this series with my whole entire heart. Fen is literally one of my favorite characters ever of all time, and I can't overstate just how much these books mean to me.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Grief
Moderate: Child abuse, Sexism, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Blood, Vomit, Abandonment
It's a middle school level book, so nothing is super graphic, child abuse is tagged, because it is never explicitly stated as such in the books, but one of the main characters comes from a clearly abusive and generally bad home life, though it is never talked about too much or with too much detail, but it is always talked about rather casually due to the nature of the narrators of the book.