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tracey_stewart 's review for:
Green Rider
by Kristen Britain
What *happened* with this book? I read it ... oh, a long time ago. I loved it. This time? Erm.
I could write a big long complaining review, but there's never time for that sort of thing anymore. What I will say is that Karigan has to be one of the most irritating fu- er, screw-ups I've encountered in a while. She is constantly stumbling, fainting, getting herself injured, and mouthing off when she should keep her mouth shut ... and then of course a minute later she's defeating a skilled swordsman or using jujitsu to get out of a jam. (Then again, given how pathetic the oh-so-skilled swordsmen are in general, no wonder some kid was able to hold her own.) She gets a surprising number of people killed for someone who's supposed to be the hero of the story - one situation in particular bothers me, where she stands there whining that she's NOT a Green Rider, she's not she's not she's not *footstamp*, to someone who has - seeing her dressed as a Green Rider, I need to mention - implored her to carry an urgent message. Karigan pitches a fit at being asked to deliver a message as if she was a Greenie (did I mention she's wearing the uniform), and a little while later people are being tortured and in fact (spoiler) the whole monarchy is overthrown. If she had just listened for five minutes instead of acting like a child, she might have prevented a lot of things. Why the person who was unable to pass on the message doesn't later inform everyone "I TRIED to tell this silly little bint, and she went into such a snit I never had a chance", I don't understand; maybe the idiotic calf's-eyes the king was making at the girl communicated to her that it wouldn't be a good idea to run K down in front of him.
Speaking of her acting like a child ... It's a little annoying not knowing how old K is supposed to be. Sixteen? Eighteen? Sometimes she acts the latter - and other times (as mentioned) she acts about ten, but she fights adults and rides all day and night and has grown-up men fall in love with her left and right ...
There are a lot of issues with this thing. One small one being incredulity that the royal brothers are named Amilton and Zachary - A to Z? Really? Besides the fact that I just can't adapt to Zachary as a fantasy king's name. (Though it's far better than ... Shawdell. Ych.) One slightly larger issue is the sheer number of fight scenes. Unless they're superlative, I just get really, really bored with fights... and these are not superlative. And another issue: predictability. Within about a page of their first meeting, I thought "king's going to be in love with K". And - sure enough. The things that aren't predictable are kind of annoying. Oh, and the anti-monarchy group? They felt like suffragettes from Mary Poppins grafted onto the cast of characters. And the bad guys are SO BAD. ("I should like to have heard my brother's screams as he died...!") Even the sort of avuncular bad guy, Lord Mirwell, just drips with evil. It's exaggerated to a comical degree. And they're not very bright.
The first ... third, I'd say, was not unenjoyable. But the feeling of that whole beginning was so different from the rest, up through K's weird little sojourn with the Bunch sisters, that it felt like another book entirely. The Bunch sisters and their manor house was ripped straight out of any number of tellings of Beauty and the Beast - but it was entertaining. Then it sort of went agley.
I suppose in a lot of ways the narration didn't help. Ellen Archer did an overall fine job ("fine" as in ... fine, not as in "fine arts") - but there were enough stumbles and wrong emphases and mispronunciations, and it was stiff enough at times, that while I don't think it detracted, it certainly didn't burnish the story. (Though that one moment when her voice broke doing the Super Bad Guy's strained voice was pretty hilarious.) (I wrote that first sentence before the Super Bad Guy made an appearance. God, this is bad.)
Wait, did a character just say "There are two of you now, isn't there" - ??? Oh help.
I thought the book was almost over, until I looked at the counter ... and I had over ten chapters left. It was discouraging. It seemed to take forever to end. I'm deeply disappointed. I was planning on listening to the series, and now ... No. There are many better options.
I could write a big long complaining review, but there's never time for that sort of thing anymore. What I will say is that Karigan has to be one of the most irritating fu- er, screw-ups I've encountered in a while. She is constantly stumbling, fainting, getting herself injured, and mouthing off when she should keep her mouth shut ... and then of course a minute later she's defeating a skilled swordsman or using jujitsu to get out of a jam. (Then again, given how pathetic the oh-so-skilled swordsmen are in general, no wonder some kid was able to hold her own.) She gets a surprising number of people killed for someone who's supposed to be the hero of the story - one situation in particular bothers me, where she stands there whining that she's NOT a Green Rider, she's not she's not she's not *footstamp*, to someone who has - seeing her dressed as a Green Rider, I need to mention - implored her to carry an urgent message. Karigan pitches a fit at being asked to deliver a message as if she was a Greenie (did I mention she's wearing the uniform), and a little while later people are being tortured and in fact (spoiler) the whole monarchy is overthrown. If she had just listened for five minutes instead of acting like a child, she might have prevented a lot of things. Why the person who was unable to pass on the message doesn't later inform everyone "I TRIED to tell this silly little bint, and she went into such a snit I never had a chance", I don't understand; maybe the idiotic calf's-eyes the king was making at the girl communicated to her that it wouldn't be a good idea to run K down in front of him.
Speaking of her acting like a child ... It's a little annoying not knowing how old K is supposed to be. Sixteen? Eighteen? Sometimes she acts the latter - and other times (as mentioned) she acts about ten, but she fights adults and rides all day and night and has grown-up men fall in love with her left and right ...
There are a lot of issues with this thing. One small one being incredulity that the royal brothers are named Amilton and Zachary - A to Z? Really? Besides the fact that I just can't adapt to Zachary as a fantasy king's name. (Though it's far better than ... Shawdell. Ych.) One slightly larger issue is the sheer number of fight scenes. Unless they're superlative, I just get really, really bored with fights... and these are not superlative. And another issue: predictability. Within about a page of their first meeting, I thought "king's going to be in love with K". And - sure enough. The things that aren't predictable are kind of annoying. Oh, and the anti-monarchy group? They felt like suffragettes from Mary Poppins grafted onto the cast of characters. And the bad guys are SO BAD. ("I should like to have heard my brother's screams as he died...!") Even the sort of avuncular bad guy, Lord Mirwell, just drips with evil. It's exaggerated to a comical degree. And they're not very bright.
The first ... third, I'd say, was not unenjoyable. But the feeling of that whole beginning was so different from the rest, up through K's weird little sojourn with the Bunch sisters, that it felt like another book entirely. The Bunch sisters and their manor house was ripped straight out of any number of tellings of Beauty and the Beast - but it was entertaining. Then it sort of went agley.
I suppose in a lot of ways the narration didn't help. Ellen Archer did an overall fine job ("fine" as in ... fine, not as in "fine arts") - but there were enough stumbles and wrong emphases and mispronunciations, and it was stiff enough at times, that while I don't think it detracted, it certainly didn't burnish the story. (Though that one moment when her voice broke doing the Super Bad Guy's strained voice was pretty hilarious.) (I wrote that first sentence before the Super Bad Guy made an appearance. God, this is bad.)
Wait, did a character just say "There are two of you now, isn't there" - ??? Oh help.
I thought the book was almost over, until I looked at the counter ... and I had over ten chapters left. It was discouraging. It seemed to take forever to end. I'm deeply disappointed. I was planning on listening to the series, and now ... No. There are many better options.