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meredithakatz 's review for:
All of Us Villains
by C.L. Herman, Amanda Foody
"All of Us Villains" is something that lies halfway between the Hunger Games and the Fate/ series -- twisted magic families raise their children to compete in a tournament to see who can control the only High Magick remaining in the world for the next 20 years. Then it begins again. The tournament is a curse, and the only way through is to keep doing it over and over again -- or to try to find a way to break the curse.
The concepts behind this book are fantastic, and there's some character work I genuinely like in this. Foody and Herman are great at making these characters complicated, extremely messed up by their upbringing -- Alistair was my favorite, with his deep-seated traumas from being raised to be terrorized into thinking of himself as a monster, but the others all have a similar push-pull where you don't necessarily like them at all, but you do understand why they're like this.
That said, I had trouble staying engaged with this book for long stretches. This is kind of a two-part thing. First, there are four point of view characters, so there is a LOT of switching back and forth and going over the same plot points from slightly different perspectives, especially early on. I wished this part had been gone over more tightly; I feel like there could have been ways to tune these sections so they cut between each other to show the selection simultaneously instead of finish one, start the next, finish that, start the next, etc.
The second part is that a narrative choice that's done repeatedly throughout this is to backload the relationships or story reveals until they serve the plot instead of setting them up early. This both makes the front half plod a little more and means that some of the work just isn't done up front when it is needed to pay off later. For example, the ruined relationship between Briony and Isobel is referenced, but we don't find out what it is until super late and then it's treated sort of as an exposition dump. I think the emotional entanglements of the tournament could have been a lot stronger (not just for them but for all the characters) if we saw the characters interacting and knew how they felt about each other going into it -- it would have more payoff than them making decisions to make alliances/betray each other/kiss each other/whatever and THEN have a page talking about how the characters used to date, or a page talking about what one person did to the other before. I think it would have been a read I couldn't put down if the authors had invested me into the relationships between the characters by showing me them in action *before* they had to go fight each other to the death.
Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading this, and as the story ends right at the point it feels like the plot is actually getting starting, I'll probably pick up the sequel to see how it plays out.
Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
The concepts behind this book are fantastic, and there's some character work I genuinely like in this. Foody and Herman are great at making these characters complicated, extremely messed up by their upbringing -- Alistair was my favorite, with his deep-seated traumas from being raised to be terrorized into thinking of himself as a monster, but the others all have a similar push-pull where you don't necessarily like them at all, but you do understand why they're like this.
That said, I had trouble staying engaged with this book for long stretches. This is kind of a two-part thing. First, there are four point of view characters, so there is a LOT of switching back and forth and going over the same plot points from slightly different perspectives, especially early on. I wished this part had been gone over more tightly; I feel like there could have been ways to tune these sections so they cut between each other to show the selection simultaneously instead of finish one, start the next, finish that, start the next, etc.
The second part is that a narrative choice that's done repeatedly throughout this is to backload the relationships or story reveals until they serve the plot instead of setting them up early. This both makes the front half plod a little more and means that some of the work just isn't done up front when it is needed to pay off later. For example, the ruined relationship between Briony and Isobel is referenced, but we don't find out what it is until super late and then it's treated sort of as an exposition dump. I think the emotional entanglements of the tournament could have been a lot stronger (not just for them but for all the characters) if we saw the characters interacting and knew how they felt about each other going into it -- it would have more payoff than them making decisions to make alliances/betray each other/kiss each other/whatever and THEN have a page talking about how the characters used to date, or a page talking about what one person did to the other before. I think it would have been a read I couldn't put down if the authors had invested me into the relationships between the characters by showing me them in action *before* they had to go fight each other to the death.
Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading this, and as the story ends right at the point it feels like the plot is actually getting starting, I'll probably pick up the sequel to see how it plays out.
Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.