hannahmareads 's review for:

Vesselless by Cortney L. Winn

3.0

adventurous dark tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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The premise of this book is usually what I would go for: strong female main character, death trials, political scheming, monsters, magic, etc. The whole vessel thing is interesting and souls and whatnot. What was really lacking in this book for me was the world building and the lore. And the most frustrating part is that, since the main character is such a big reader and researcher, there’s ample opportunities to effectively weave that into the story. However a lot of the history of the kingdoms, the origin and purpose of the vessels, all the stuff about gems and melding and stuff is all kind of glossed over. I feel like you get more info about species from other realms than you do about the main setting. I went through most of the book not really knowing what was going on or being introduced to another plot point in a way that made me feel like I’d missed something. The slow burn romance and duel tournaments kept it interesting but the overall storyline that was taking place, while it involved a lot of stuff that was happening “off stage”, things could have been explained better.