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A review by awyl
A Throne of Swans by Katharine Corr
3.0
2.5/5
A Throne of Swans follows Aderyn, an eighteen year old royal tasked with protecting Atratys, a place where all nobles can transform into different birds. Unfortunately Aderyn herself is unable to transform, after being traumatised by watching her mother mauled to death by hawks a few years prior.
Honestly, I had pretty high expectations of this book after reading some other reviews and from hearing about the authors’ other novels. However, I was slightly disappointed. The characters and plot seemed rather average and predictable – nothing really compelled me to keep reading on because I felt like I knew exactly what was going to happen, and I didn’t really feel attached to any of the characters because they all seemed so distant and lacked much depth.
Although it seems as if the main character is trying to be portrayed as strong and independent, she seems rather impressionable and had to be ‘saved’ multiple times by all of the potential love interests. She also felt a little young for an 18 year old? Some of her thought processes were just plain stupid and impulsive making her seem much younger than stated. With that being said, there is evident character development and she does become more confident and self aware as you progress through the story.
The ‘villain’ of the story was pretty blatant from the start, which was a bit of a let down, as it wasn’t really a twist or a shock when they were ‘revealed’. Also, it was quite an abrupt turn in the book, because Aderyn went from being really close with them to absolutely hate their guts without much of a strong reason, which was quite jarring.
I feel that the synopsis of this book was slightly misleading: very little regarding the attack on Aderyn’s mother is actually revealed, with the majority of the plot being about how Aderyn is going to find out what happened, without her actually discovering anything of much use.
There were a few subplots that held my attention more than the main plot, which is probably the only reason I kept reading until the end of this book. These were far more interesting additions that actually resulted in some answers.
A Throne of Swans follows Aderyn, an eighteen year old royal tasked with protecting Atratys, a place where all nobles can transform into different birds. Unfortunately Aderyn herself is unable to transform, after being traumatised by watching her mother mauled to death by hawks a few years prior.
Honestly, I had pretty high expectations of this book after reading some other reviews and from hearing about the authors’ other novels. However, I was slightly disappointed. The characters and plot seemed rather average and predictable – nothing really compelled me to keep reading on because I felt like I knew exactly what was going to happen, and I didn’t really feel attached to any of the characters because they all seemed so distant and lacked much depth.
Although it seems as if the main character is trying to be portrayed as strong and independent, she seems rather impressionable and had to be ‘saved’ multiple times by all of the potential love interests. She also felt a little young for an 18 year old? Some of her thought processes were just plain stupid and impulsive making her seem much younger than stated. With that being said, there is evident character development and she does become more confident and self aware as you progress through the story.
The ‘villain’ of the story was pretty blatant from the start, which was a bit of a let down, as it wasn’t really a twist or a shock when they were ‘revealed’. Also, it was quite an abrupt turn in the book, because Aderyn went from being really close with them to absolutely hate their guts without much of a strong reason, which was quite jarring.
I feel that the synopsis of this book was slightly misleading: very little regarding the attack on Aderyn’s mother is actually revealed, with the majority of the plot being about how Aderyn is going to find out what happened, without her actually discovering anything of much use.
There were a few subplots that held my attention more than the main plot, which is probably the only reason I kept reading until the end of this book. These were far more interesting additions that actually resulted in some answers.