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worldsunlikeourown 's review for:
The Ruined
by Renée Ahdieh
Find this review and more on my blog at Worlds Unlike Our Own.
With the Sylvan Vale and Wyld at war, Celine and Bastien find themselves on opposite sides of the conflict. Bastien seeks some unexpected allies to protect the severely weakened Winter Court while Celine stays by the injured Queen Silla’s side unsure of who to trust. As the conflict inevitably draws closer, Celine learns of an artifact, a mirror that allows one to travel through time that she could use to change the past – and alter their fates.
I added this book to my 2023 TBR very uncertainly as the first three books of this series were decidedly a mixed bag. I’ve been delaying picking up this book because frankly, the way the rating has dropped was not encouraging, but I decided to just get it over with and at least finish reading the series if nothing else.
This is about to be one of the harsher, if not the harshest review I’ve written on this blog. I usually wait atleast a day after finishing a book to review it, but this review was literally writing itself in my mind, so I decided to just go ahead.
I recalled very little of the story leading up to this and had to rely completely on what was happening to try and remember the major plot points. That worked surprisingly well actually and more of the story came back to me than I expected.
And speaking of plot – this was just all over the place. This book was the finale of a quartet. Why was there so much new information still being revealed? Trying to world build at such a late stage doesn’t work, especially when the book isn’t all that long and the characters’ focus really should be elsewhere, such as the brewing war. Each successive book in this series has gone further and further away from the original New Orleans plot and I’m so disappointed about it. The setting and atmosphere of New Orleans and the Cours de Lions were what I liked best about the first book and it’s sad that neither really played any major part in this series by the end.
Finally, what was even the point of Haroun being in this story? He did nothing that another character could not have done instead as far as I could tell. If it has to be a crossover, at least make it worthwhile.
I would say the place where this story ended at is practically a completely different story to where it started. It feels like the author perhaps lost interest along the way, because the plot, narration and character arcs are all far below what I expect from Renee Ahdieh’s books.
Mercifully, this was an extremely fast paced book and it took me only a little over two hours to finish it. It also was quite easy to read and handled the frequent POV switches well, and it drew me back into the story and world quickly even though I read the previous book over a year ago.
Where I actually mostly liked Celine’s character in the series so far, I ended up hating her in this book. Her personality did a complete 180, and where she was always determined and adventurous before, she was now completely arrogant and self-centered, and also ridiculously naive, believing people she really had no reason to trust, and basically whined throughout this book. Bastien at least was trying to do the right thing and make sensible decisions, but didn’t bother actually telling anyone what he was doing.
The original cast of characters from The Beautiful only made very brief appearances and basically didn’t have any impact on this book at all, which was extremely disappointing given how central the roles they played in previous books were. As for Emilie, I have to admit, even after 4 books, I don’t fully understand her hatred of Bastien who never hurt her. I thought she might even have a redemption arc of sorts, but right to the end, her enmity was only used as a way to drive the plot forward. Her character was a missed opportunity for the series as a whole, but she could have also opened the path to an alternate end for this story.
Also, what on earth happened to the romance? It was quite a central thread in the previous books, and here, it just…wasn’t there at all. And what even was the point of building up these character arcs over three books to just turn around and throw them away over one miscommunication?
Was the death of a major character really just mentioned like that in passing? I dropped my rating by another half star for that alone, honestly. The ending was a mess and so rushed. I thought I accidentally skipped a few chapters ahead in my kindle, but no, that really was how the author chose to wrap this up.
Not to mention that the story wasn’t even wrapped up properly. There were too many loose threads left unresolved (major plot lines at that!) and quite a bit of it didn’t even make sense. I hope there isn’t a spinoff or even worse, a fifth book coming, because I absolutely refuse to read any more of this.
I went into this book expecting to be disappointed and somehow it managed to be even worse, so I’m very upset and hoping this doesn’t send me into a reading slump. I am glad however, that I’ve finished the series. Whatever Renee Ahdieh’s next novel is, I’m certainly going to be more wary of picking it up now, but I do love her writing style so I’ll probably end up reading it, however, I certainly won’t be recommending this series to anyone.
With the Sylvan Vale and Wyld at war, Celine and Bastien find themselves on opposite sides of the conflict. Bastien seeks some unexpected allies to protect the severely weakened Winter Court while Celine stays by the injured Queen Silla’s side unsure of who to trust. As the conflict inevitably draws closer, Celine learns of an artifact, a mirror that allows one to travel through time that she could use to change the past – and alter their fates.
I added this book to my 2023 TBR very uncertainly as the first three books of this series were decidedly a mixed bag. I’ve been delaying picking up this book because frankly, the way the rating has dropped was not encouraging, but I decided to just get it over with and at least finish reading the series if nothing else.
This is about to be one of the harsher, if not the harshest review I’ve written on this blog. I usually wait atleast a day after finishing a book to review it, but this review was literally writing itself in my mind, so I decided to just go ahead.
I recalled very little of the story leading up to this and had to rely completely on what was happening to try and remember the major plot points. That worked surprisingly well actually and more of the story came back to me than I expected.
And speaking of plot – this was just all over the place. This book was the finale of a quartet. Why was there so much new information still being revealed? Trying to world build at such a late stage doesn’t work, especially when the book isn’t all that long and the characters’ focus really should be elsewhere, such as the brewing war. Each successive book in this series has gone further and further away from the original New Orleans plot and I’m so disappointed about it. The setting and atmosphere of New Orleans and the Cours de Lions were what I liked best about the first book and it’s sad that neither really played any major part in this series by the end.
Finally, what was even the point of Haroun being in this story? He did nothing that another character could not have done instead as far as I could tell. If it has to be a crossover, at least make it worthwhile.
I would say the place where this story ended at is practically a completely different story to where it started. It feels like the author perhaps lost interest along the way, because the plot, narration and character arcs are all far below what I expect from Renee Ahdieh’s books.
Mercifully, this was an extremely fast paced book and it took me only a little over two hours to finish it. It also was quite easy to read and handled the frequent POV switches well, and it drew me back into the story and world quickly even though I read the previous book over a year ago.
Where I actually mostly liked Celine’s character in the series so far, I ended up hating her in this book. Her personality did a complete 180, and where she was always determined and adventurous before, she was now completely arrogant and self-centered, and also ridiculously naive, believing people she really had no reason to trust, and basically whined throughout this book. Bastien at least was trying to do the right thing and make sensible decisions, but didn’t bother actually telling anyone what he was doing.
The original cast of characters from The Beautiful only made very brief appearances and basically didn’t have any impact on this book at all, which was extremely disappointing given how central the roles they played in previous books were. As for Emilie, I have to admit, even after 4 books, I don’t fully understand her hatred of Bastien who never hurt her. I thought she might even have a redemption arc of sorts, but right to the end, her enmity was only used as a way to drive the plot forward. Her character was a missed opportunity for the series as a whole, but she could have also opened the path to an alternate end for this story.
Also, what on earth happened to the romance? It was quite a central thread in the previous books, and here, it just…wasn’t there at all. And what even was the point of building up these character arcs over three books to just turn around and throw them away over one miscommunication?
Was the death of a major character really just mentioned like that in passing? I dropped my rating by another half star for that alone, honestly. The ending was a mess and so rushed. I thought I accidentally skipped a few chapters ahead in my kindle, but no, that really was how the author chose to wrap this up.
Not to mention that the story wasn’t even wrapped up properly. There were too many loose threads left unresolved (major plot lines at that!) and quite a bit of it didn’t even make sense. I hope there isn’t a spinoff or even worse, a fifth book coming, because I absolutely refuse to read any more of this.
I went into this book expecting to be disappointed and somehow it managed to be even worse, so I’m very upset and hoping this doesn’t send me into a reading slump. I am glad however, that I’ve finished the series. Whatever Renee Ahdieh’s next novel is, I’m certainly going to be more wary of picking it up now, but I do love her writing style so I’ll probably end up reading it, however, I certainly won’t be recommending this series to anyone.