Reviews

The Ivory Key by Akshaya Raman

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fionadesantis's review

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adventurous emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

angelie_jelly's review

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adventurous emotional hopeful mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

bec_ourcolourfulpages's review against another edition

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adventurous

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

This fantasy follows four siblings: Vira, Ronak, Kaleb, and Riya. They are very different, don't really like each other much, and are each harboring secrets and conflicting agendas. The siblings find themselves needing each other when magic, a prized resource, runs out and is the only thing between peace and war. Thus begins their quest for the Ivory Key, which will save Ashoka, and the siblings.
I don't know if I have ever read a book from four siblings points of view, I really liked it. Each of the siblings were well developed with distinct personalities. The pacing of the story was a bit off, the questing chapters were too much for me, but I really enjoyed the story and the characters and love the cliffhanger at the end. The epilogue is told from a fifth perspective, a tease for the duology’s next installment, which I will definitely be reading.

entamewitchlulu's review

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adventurous tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

kingdino's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

I really wanted to like this book, but it’s just a bit of a mess. It takes about 1/3 for the characters to actually do something and then another 100 pages until they finally go looking for what this entire book is about. And I just really didn’t care.
I like 1 character. I didn’t dislike the other characters, but i just simply did not care enough about them.

The magic system was very vague to me. All we know about it is that it comes from the mines and that it can do *stuff*. I think that’s also the reason I didn’t care when the twist happened.

I would also like to mention that I did not know this was a duology when I bought this book and now i’m kind of upset about the ending because I don’t want to read the second book but I also don’t want to leave this story unfinished. Maybe I will read the second book sometime in the future, but not right now.

And lastly, I don’t think this story should be tagged as lgbtqia+. Yes there is a queer character, but it’s not a main part of the story (i think it actually only gets mentioned once that he likes men). Just because there is a queer character does not make a queer story.

harleyrae's review

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2.0

2.5/5 stars

I was so excited for this book, but unfortunately it feel flat for me. It very quickly became a book that I could not for the life of me remember. I just finished it 5mins ago, and could tell you nothing about it. The book wasn’t bad, I just didn’t connect with it. Will not be continuing on.