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filey 's review for:
To Kill a Shadow
by Katherine Quinn
adventurous
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Alright, I needed to let this sit a little before writing down my thoughts and at the end of the day, this just wasn't my cup of tea.
It feels like in multiple places, choices where made to remove anything from the story that might cause people to call elements or characters "problematic" and it just makes it boring/flat.
I feel like the appeal of a recruit/commander romance is partially in the tension arising from the potential conflicts of interest, tricky to navigate power dynamics and their potentially different stations in life. The book sidesteps this by making the recruit not really care about hierarchy with next to no consequences, the commander immediately respecting her as an equal and oh, also somehow they're the same age. The recruit is the only woman among the recruits but the story is very obviously not interested in exploring that in any way because it's convenient for the plot. ("Oh it's not because we are not allowed to recruit women, the king is just kinda misogynist and prefers we don't, dw about it tho.")
The world building and lore is interesting(ish) and the main characters are fine on their own, but together they just have zero chemistry. This was somewhat tied to the writing style for me which constantly told me how hot these two were for each other while I was sitting there wondering why.
Also if you got curious about this because you saw it tagged as LGBT - don't bother. It's the "1 throwaway line about an ex and a side character is gay" kind of rep.
It feels like in multiple places, choices where made to remove anything from the story that might cause people to call elements or characters "problematic" and it just makes it boring/flat.
I feel like the appeal of a recruit/commander romance is partially in the tension arising from the potential conflicts of interest, tricky to navigate power dynamics and their potentially different stations in life. The book sidesteps this by making the recruit not really care about hierarchy with next to no consequences, the commander immediately respecting her as an equal and oh, also somehow they're the same age. The recruit is the only woman among the recruits but the story is very obviously not interested in exploring that in any way because it's convenient for the plot. ("Oh it's not because we are not allowed to recruit women, the king is just kinda misogynist and prefers we don't, dw about it tho.")
The world building and lore is interesting(ish) and the main characters are fine on their own, but together they just have zero chemistry. This was somewhat tied to the writing style for me which constantly told me how hot these two were for each other while I was sitting there wondering why.
Also if you got curious about this because you saw it tagged as LGBT - don't bother. It's the "1 throwaway line about an ex and a side character is gay" kind of rep.