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A review by selfmythologies
King of Scars by Leigh Bardugo
3.0
hmmm
this book isn't bad by any means, but i couldn't shake the feeling that i was just kind of......underwhelmed. I remember being absolutely in love with the Six of Crows duology, and while I haven't read the Shadow and Bone series (and I don't really plan to), I did enjoy the first season of the TV show a lot.
The thing is, generally, a lot of the things in here are great! The characters are interesting, especially Nikolai with his unstable identity, his doubts and the pressures of responsibility - his arc was pretty amazing, and my favorite chapters were in fact the ones with the flashbacks and backstories of the main characters.
I also liked the setting especially of Nina's chapters - finally something set in Fjerda! - and the whole mystery around that factory over the little town and the dreadful anticipation of what was really going on was really well-done.
So why didn't I like it more as a whole? I don't know if I just had too high expectations, but I felt the plot was just.....boring and so formulaic? The first half of the book moves at an excrutiatingly slow pace - and that doesn't have to be negative, of course, if the slow pace fulfills a purpose - like indulging in atmosphere or character development. But that didn't really happen here at all, it was just a very slow plot with very few surprises. The twist in the middle is briefly surprising, but then it becomes very standard for fantasy once again - Zoya having an empowerment arc, the villains tricking the heroes (and I found Elizaveta's character painfully basic).
Again, there's nothing wrong with using tropes and storylines that are familiar, but this book does absolutely nothing new with them. That's the main problem for me, I think - it feels like I've read all of this before in some form somewhere else, and the fact that neither most of the character development nor the writing really bring anything special to it.....is a problem.
I don't know if this is me just growing out of the YA fantasy genre as a whole, but I hope it's not. I guess I'll have to see how I like the second book, which I still plan on reading, of course.
this book isn't bad by any means, but i couldn't shake the feeling that i was just kind of......underwhelmed. I remember being absolutely in love with the Six of Crows duology, and while I haven't read the Shadow and Bone series (and I don't really plan to), I did enjoy the first season of the TV show a lot.
The thing is, generally, a lot of the things in here are great! The characters are interesting, especially Nikolai with his unstable identity, his doubts and the pressures of responsibility - his arc was pretty amazing, and my favorite chapters were in fact the ones with the flashbacks and backstories of the main characters.
I also liked the setting especially of Nina's chapters - finally something set in Fjerda! - and the whole mystery around that factory over the little town and the dreadful anticipation of what was really going on was really well-done.
So why didn't I like it more as a whole? I don't know if I just had too high expectations, but I felt the plot was just.....boring and so formulaic? The first half of the book moves at an excrutiatingly slow pace - and that doesn't have to be negative, of course, if the slow pace fulfills a purpose - like indulging in atmosphere or character development. But that didn't really happen here at all, it was just a very slow plot with very few surprises. The twist in the middle is briefly surprising, but then it becomes very standard for fantasy once again - Zoya having an empowerment arc, the villains tricking the heroes (and I found Elizaveta's character painfully basic).
Again, there's nothing wrong with using tropes and storylines that are familiar, but this book does absolutely nothing new with them. That's the main problem for me, I think - it feels like I've read all of this before in some form somewhere else, and the fact that neither most of the character development nor the writing really bring anything special to it.....is a problem.
I don't know if this is me just growing out of the YA fantasy genre as a whole, but I hope it's not. I guess I'll have to see how I like the second book, which I still plan on reading, of course.