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A review by blackcatreads
Court of the Vampire Queen by Katee Robert
adventurous
challenging
lighthearted
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.5
Stats
Writing: 4/10
Plot: 5/10
Characters: 7/10
World-Building: 5/10
I want to start this review by saying that, while is book is objectively not good, I loved it anyway. I was hooked from the very beginning, and I just wanted to keep reading.
The writing itself is not great. There are tons of grammatical and spelling errors that would take me out of the story. Some of the lines of the characters are so cringe I would get secondhand embarrassment.
I will say the plot is minimal at best. If you took out the spice and left only the plot, the book would maybe be 100 pages. I don't think it was a well rounded plot either. The whole plot centered around Mina getting pregnant to declare herself her father's heir and then kill him, but I felt like her father was killed too easily. It just felt like an anti-climactic ending.
I can't say I loved all the characters. I felt like Mina was a bit annoying and was constantly a damsel in distress. There were hints of times where she would show a backbone but then she would immediately revert back to damsel in distress when a man was around. I did love Wolf, Rylan, and Malachi. I thought they were such fun characters but we did only get surface level views of them.
This is a semi-low fantasy, but I don't feel like the world was very developed. I don't understand how the magic system works at all. I still am not sure how you get a bloodline vampire. I feel like none of that is explained. Also, out of the whole world, why is the compound in Montana? And how was Mina being tracked? A lot of these things are just holes in the world.
That being said, the spice was fantastic. I loved it. It's the whole reason I kept reading. It's a vampire romance, so there is obviously a lot of blood and sharp objects involved, but there is also a pretty heavy breed kink element to this book. So, if that is a hard pass for you, then this probably isn't the book for you.
Writing: 4/10
Plot: 5/10
Characters: 7/10
World-Building: 5/10
I want to start this review by saying that, while is book is objectively not good, I loved it anyway. I was hooked from the very beginning, and I just wanted to keep reading.
The writing itself is not great. There are tons of grammatical and spelling errors that would take me out of the story. Some of the lines of the characters are so cringe I would get secondhand embarrassment.
I will say the plot is minimal at best. If you took out the spice and left only the plot, the book would maybe be 100 pages. I don't think it was a well rounded plot either. The whole plot centered around Mina getting pregnant to declare herself her father's heir and then kill him, but I felt like her father was killed too easily. It just felt like an anti-climactic ending.
I can't say I loved all the characters. I felt like Mina was a bit annoying and was constantly a damsel in distress. There were hints of times where she would show a backbone but then she would immediately revert back to damsel in distress when a man was around. I did love Wolf, Rylan, and Malachi. I thought they were such fun characters but we did only get surface level views of them.
This is a semi-low fantasy, but I don't feel like the world was very developed. I don't understand how the magic system works at all. I still am not sure how you get a bloodline vampire. I feel like none of that is explained. Also, out of the whole world, why is the compound in Montana? And how was Mina being tracked? A lot of these things are just holes in the world.
That being said, the spice was fantastic. I loved it. It's the whole reason I kept reading. It's a vampire romance, so there is obviously a lot of blood and sharp objects involved, but there is also a pretty heavy breed kink element to this book. So, if that is a hard pass for you, then this probably isn't the book for you.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Cursing, Death, Gore, Pregnancy, Sexual content, Blood, and Death of parent