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A review by just22jess22
The Blood Traitor by Lynette Noni
I feel like I need to preface this review by saying that I probably should have let this series go after the first book, it wasn't quite my "jam" from the get-go and sadly, it didn't improve as the series progressed.
I took a decent amount of issue with the with the first two books for being a bit basic and predictable and I thought it was a bit insensitive how the prison was structured to mirror Auschwitz in a number of ways. I did think the way they dealt with Kiva's trauma was believable and well handled, and I quite liked the tug and pull of the two loyalties she secretly harboured and how these conflicted her.
But.
This book had none of the good parts and none of the bad parts of the first two books - this book was just one giant sob-fest of "poor mes" for the main character as she blandly gets hauled along from one place to the next. Seriously. You could drown in the invariable sobfest that is book-three-Kiva-Meridan.
The amount of self loathing and self pity that emanated from the pages of this book was SUCH a bore - Why Noni chose to focus on this rather than so many of the other cool things she set up in book one and book two I have no idea. We had almost no character progression from the merry gang of rag-tag quest fulfillers, the world building that occurred boiled down to single passages of "then they came across another land. It was sandy and looked different to the last place they visited" and the two big boss battles that ended the trilogy were not only predictable and anti-climactic, but they were rushed and unfulfilling.
The only cool character from this book was Cresta- she remained true to her character from the last two books but her growth felt real and meaningful. Why didn't we hear more from Zuleeka? Why is Torell just wandering along not doing much of anything at all? Why is Naari so submissive in this book when she was a firecracker in the last two? Why don't we hear from the royals trapped in the castle? Why is Tipp's only part in this book to be slightly hurt by Kiva's actions and a little bit in the way? Why doesn't Cal do literally anything interesting? Ugh.
As for the romances - snoozefest. I was sad that nothing was really done with the cool LGBTQI rep that was slowly brewing in the background of the last few books, and the Kiva/Jaren situation was just SO DULL.
I choose to think that I am just not the audience for this book - the twists were super predictable, the inner-monologue was boring and repetitive and the ending left me super unfulfilled. Rounding up to a 2 star, but don't not read this on my account, maybe it'll be more up your alley than mine.
I took a decent amount of issue with the with the first two books for being a bit basic and predictable and I thought it was a bit insensitive how the prison was structured to mirror Auschwitz in a number of ways. I did think the way they dealt with Kiva's trauma was believable and well handled, and I quite liked the tug and pull of the two loyalties she secretly harboured and how these conflicted her.
But.
This book had none of the good parts and none of the bad parts of the first two books - this book was just one giant sob-fest of "poor mes" for the main character as she blandly gets hauled along from one place to the next. Seriously. You could drown in the invariable sobfest that is book-three-Kiva-Meridan.
The amount of self loathing and self pity that emanated from the pages of this book was SUCH a bore - Why Noni chose to focus on this rather than so many of the other cool things she set up in book one and book two I have no idea. We had almost no character progression from the merry gang of rag-tag quest fulfillers, the world building that occurred boiled down to single passages of "then they came across another land. It was sandy and looked different to the last place they visited" and the two big boss battles that ended the trilogy were not only predictable and anti-climactic, but they were rushed and unfulfilling.
The only cool character from this book was Cresta- she remained true to her character from the last two books but her growth felt real and meaningful. Why didn't we hear more from Zuleeka? Why is Torell just wandering along not doing much of anything at all? Why is Naari so submissive in this book when she was a firecracker in the last two? Why don't we hear from the royals trapped in the castle? Why is Tipp's only part in this book to be slightly hurt by Kiva's actions and a little bit in the way? Why doesn't Cal do literally anything interesting? Ugh.
As for the romances - snoozefest. I was sad that nothing was really done with the cool LGBTQI rep that was slowly brewing in the background of the last few books, and the Kiva/Jaren situation was just SO DULL.
I choose to think that I am just not the audience for this book - the twists were super predictable, the inner-monologue was boring and repetitive and the ending left me super unfulfilled. Rounding up to a 2 star, but don't not read this on my account, maybe it'll be more up your alley than mine.