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A review by literaryleisha
The Girl King by Mimi Yu
3.0
FULL Review on the blog! https://literaryleisha.wordpress.com/2019/01/15/review-the-girl-king-by-mimi-yu-blog-tour/
*This was sent to me for free in exchange for a review.
The plot is definitely a slow one, especially at the beginning. At the start, I was intrigued and hopeful but the middle chunk of the book was just too slow. There’s a lot of build-up and background information going on. (I read the ARC – which is an uncorrected proof. How much of this ended up in the final copy, I don’t know) It did feel unnecessarily long in places, with editing down it could’ve been great. The last 150-200 pages were the best, they were gripping and interesting – I was really engrossed at this point. At almost 500 pages, it really needed to pick up before then. It was pretty long winded, I feel it would’ve been better condensed down.
The world-building; simplistic and minimal. There are hints and glimpses of the world but not enough, in my opinion. The parts of the world and magic we did see, were so interesting and cool – I just wish there was more to it! Hopefully, the sequel will enlighten us.
As with a lot of YA, it has its tropes. A lot of the plot twists and turns were pretty predictable. Nothing was particularly surprising, there was no ‘shock factor’ because you could see what was going to happen.
Nothing was overly original, it wasn’t bad at all. Just nothing new, really. It’s the same fantasy story of the royal claiming back their throne – just with a slightly different setting.
*This was sent to me for free in exchange for a review.
The plot is definitely a slow one, especially at the beginning. At the start, I was intrigued and hopeful but the middle chunk of the book was just too slow. There’s a lot of build-up and background information going on. (I read the ARC – which is an uncorrected proof. How much of this ended up in the final copy, I don’t know) It did feel unnecessarily long in places, with editing down it could’ve been great. The last 150-200 pages were the best, they were gripping and interesting – I was really engrossed at this point. At almost 500 pages, it really needed to pick up before then. It was pretty long winded, I feel it would’ve been better condensed down.
The world-building; simplistic and minimal. There are hints and glimpses of the world but not enough, in my opinion. The parts of the world and magic we did see, were so interesting and cool – I just wish there was more to it! Hopefully, the sequel will enlighten us.
As with a lot of YA, it has its tropes. A lot of the plot twists and turns were pretty predictable. Nothing was particularly surprising, there was no ‘shock factor’ because you could see what was going to happen.
Nothing was overly original, it wasn’t bad at all. Just nothing new, really. It’s the same fantasy story of the royal claiming back their throne – just with a slightly different setting.