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ailsaod's review
adventurous
hopeful
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.0
Oh wow this book was not long but I felt every page of it! I am baffled: how can so little happen in a book and yet still make the ending seem rushed? The setting was uninteresting - the book blurb boasts about "lush references to the I-Ching" which I didn't know of and wrongly assumed was some kind of book of Chinese folklore or something similar (it is actually a text about divination which is a strange thing to base a fantasy novel off of and I cannot think of anything that struck me as a reference). In fact to me the overall setting felt very generically European save from the main characters eating rice instead of the fantasy quest staple of bread and cheese. I am sure that other mythologies have Dryad or Unicorn equivalent creatures and translating their names to the English version aids understanding but it also means that a reader who only knows of the European version of the creature will only imagine that.
Another problem with this book is the characters - they are flat and I was utterly unable to feel anything in particular about them. The central romance had no reason for happening - Taisin has a vision of the future where she is in love with Kaede and then she's like "oh no I had best fall in love with her then!" They barely even talk to each other and yet they are also supposed to be madly in love. Also the author made a universe with no homophobia and then decided to add in different elements that make their relationship forbidden?
This book also wishes to have not one but two messages but fails in the delivery of both which I must say is an achievement! The most obvious is that a whole second quest is hurriedly tacked onto the end to make sure the reader knows that no problem is solved with murder. This is thrown right in the reader's face very unsubtly and immediately undercut with murder once again being used to solve the problem. Wow. I will say that a lot of the many seemingly purposeless scenes from earlier in the book made more sense once this moral was revealed but it doesn't change how boring they were! The second message is that true love is a thing - although I'm not certain if this was meant as while a lot of noise was made about it at the beginning, in the end Kaede and Taisin decide not to be together . Love it when people contradict themselves.
So to summarise: book is boring, badly paced and inconsistent. Would not recommend!
Content Warnings
Minor: Child death, Death, and Murder
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