Scan barcode
A review by fablemoon
Ruinsong by Julia Ember
3.0
★★★✩✩ - I enjoyed this book, but something about it was lacking.
I'd like to preface that while it's described here on goodreads as a "romantic fantasy" this is NOT a soft romantic cozy fantasy. Is it a fantasy? Yes. Is it romantic? Sure. But the world of Ruinsong is a cruel one, so I'd like to supply trigger warnings for those who may need them: Emotional and physical abuse, torture, animal torture and death.
Quick Gist - The story revolves around Cadence, a mage, who was trained and is eventually employed by the queen to do her bidding against Cadence's will. She helps the populace of her city in her free time as best as she can, but she always finds herself in a bit of a situation. She encounters a childhood friend along the way and a romance blooms along with a rebellion.
The Good - I LOVED the magic system! Overall Ruinsong was a decent fantasy read with a nice touch of LGBT representation.
The Bad - I don't regret reading this book by any means, but it did have a few major issues that I feel really need to be talked about.
The biggest one was the weirdly specific use of "Black" and "White" descriptions for characters that felt entirely unnecessary and honestly kinda yucky. It was also often the only main descriptive characteristic we'd receive for a character. Otherwise we did get one single taste of really beautifully descriptive character imagery, but it was unfortunately just kinda thrown into the middle of the book and that was it, that was the only one.
The pacing of the book was great at first, but it felt incredibly rushed towards the end. We never find out about some side characters that were important in the first half of the book. Then suddenly the climax hits and the book is over in what feels like 3 pages(in a bad way). I think the author tried her best to cleanly wrap it all up, but In the end I found myself fairly disappointed in the last quarter of the book.
Overview - I wouldn't NOT recommend this read... you just need to be aware it has some major issues up front. I'd say overall it's a bit of a mixed bag, but still worth adding to your reading list anyways.
I'd like to preface that while it's described here on goodreads as a "romantic fantasy" this is NOT a soft romantic cozy fantasy. Is it a fantasy? Yes. Is it romantic? Sure. But the world of Ruinsong is a cruel one, so I'd like to supply trigger warnings for those who may need them: Emotional and physical abuse, torture, animal torture and death.
Quick Gist - The story revolves around Cadence, a mage, who was trained and is eventually employed by the queen to do her bidding against Cadence's will. She helps the populace of her city in her free time as best as she can, but she always finds herself in a bit of a situation. She encounters a childhood friend along the way and a romance blooms along with a rebellion.
The Good - I LOVED the magic system! Overall Ruinsong was a decent fantasy read with a nice touch of LGBT representation.
The Bad - I don't regret reading this book by any means, but it did have a few major issues that I feel really need to be talked about.
The biggest one was the weirdly specific use of "Black" and "White" descriptions for characters that felt entirely unnecessary and honestly kinda yucky. It was also often the only main descriptive characteristic we'd receive for a character. Otherwise we did get one single taste of really beautifully descriptive character imagery, but it was unfortunately just kinda thrown into the middle of the book and that was it, that was the only one.
The pacing of the book was great at first, but it felt incredibly rushed towards the end. We never find out about some side characters that were important in the first half of the book. Then suddenly the climax hits and the book is over in what feels like 3 pages(in a bad way). I think the author tried her best to cleanly wrap it all up, but In the end I found myself fairly disappointed in the last quarter of the book.
Overview - I wouldn't NOT recommend this read... you just need to be aware it has some major issues up front. I'd say overall it's a bit of a mixed bag, but still worth adding to your reading list anyways.