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satan_is_back's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
mysterious
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? It's complicated
4.0
katyanaish's review against another edition
2.0
Let's just say that I have some serious qualms.
Firstly, for the record, I'm taking this off my fantasy list. There's no supernatural elements. It's a fiction book, taking place on a fiction world, but I don't think it qualifies as fantasy unless it has something supernatural going on - magic, supernatural beings, etc.
Anyway.
I'm falling on the side of dislike for the lead female. She's inconsistent, she makes terrible snap judgments, and she's falling in love with a complete dickhead. More on that in a minute. But basically, I can't get past the way Olina/Frost/Willow/who-the-fuck-ever (she goes by like 5983456 names in this series) allows herself to be treated. We get to see so many scenes of her being a badass - and that really plays out in this book, honestly - followed immediately by her being a doormat. Plus ... what is her plan? I mean, there's zero thought behind any action she takes - she pretty much just careens from encounter to encounter. I don't understand how she ever thought she was going to pop away for a couple days to investigate, and then pop back. I don't understand how she planned to track down the arrow ... she pretty much just wanders down the street asking every random person she encounters. Guys, I'm being literal - that is ACTUALLY what she does. I don't understand what her plan is when she decides to be, like, a cage-match fighter. What? No, really, why? How does this further ANY of her goals? How does she see any of this playing out?
The answer, unfortunately, is that when it comes to broad choices, she is TSTL. But it's weird because she can - and does - handle herself capably in other encounters. She seems to careen wildly between acting like 15 year old, and acting like a 25 year old. It is incredibly frustrating.
In this book, we meet and become attached to a whole new cast of characters. The good news is that I liked them all a lot more than I liked the dickheads from book 1 - I just don't really care for either court at all. I thought this was a good development, and I hoped it meant that the overbearing violent asshole (Javon) that seemed to be the future love interest was not going to be that at all. Honestly, a lot of this book played out like ... plot twist, he was just as much a bad guy as her mom!
Because you guys, he was.
He's been over-the-top violent towards her from the moment we met him. At first, it was fine - there was a question about whether she killed his brother. But then, when he clearly believes she loved his brother, he's still that way. He is constantly smashing into her room, pinning her to walls, ripping her veil off, shouting in her face, grabbing her around the arms and holding her off the ground to shout more... I mean, wtf, seriously. Plus, he knows her secret, but can he be a decent fucking human being about it? No. He screams at her that if she takes her veil off, he'll kill her, and he refuses to tell her why. JUST LIKE HER MOTHER. Then when she realizes why - she finally gets a look at her face (*eyeroll*) - she realizes he's been using her as a trump card. He knows her secret, and that puts him in a pretty strong position, both against her mother and also possibly as his little pet ruler that he can control via blackmail.
Yuck.
Then in this book, we see that he apparently considers a large swath of his own people - the outer rings folks - to be scum. He regularly rounds up the people in this fight club thing, and just ... has his guards kill them in this big dome, Gladiator style. What? Why?! Who does this?! This gets his guards killed. It gets all these people killed ... people he hasn't bothered to investigate or anything. He knows less than nothing about them. They are in a fight tournament thing, where the goal is to knock your opponent out - it's basically MMA fighting. And we spend the vast majority of this book in this location, where we discover that while, yes, there are some violent assholes (Slay, etc), the vast majority of the fighters are pretty cool, supportive, etc. But Jovan has his guards just round up everyone - including people on the sidelines (Crystal) - herd them to the dome, and then send guards in there endlessly until they are all dead.
Who the fuck does that? Is that supposed to be a character I like?
But Lina fights him. And fights for her friends. That's why I was happy, like yay! They're all evil, both rulers! Lina is going to bring down him, and then her mother!
But no. She doesn't. She fights, then goes back with him. Then lets him loop right back into yelling/shaking/pinning her. She plays with him like he's flirting, when he does it. And then she even sleeps with him. And she does that JUST AFTER finding out that he was deliberately leading the whole court to believe that she was his whore, so he could control her.
Gross.
I haven't seen a single goddamn redeemable thing about Jovan, but she can't keep away from him. She loves him. It kills me.
And then, lest you think well, maybe it's just one bad choice, but surely she has some self-respect ... then she has a conversation with the fucking guy who hired 3 people to sneak into her room at night and beat her nearly to death - he literally said to beat her to the edge of death. And he expresses that he feels bad about what he did. That's it. It makes him feel bad. And she forgives him. Without a moment of thought. Without a moment of consequence. She tries to help him hide that he was the guy who did it, even, but when that's found out, she comes to his defense.
This woman thinks so little of herself that I can't help but think little of her. And I hate it, because this could be a good story, but this is just utterly gross.
Firstly, for the record, I'm taking this off my fantasy list. There's no supernatural elements. It's a fiction book, taking place on a fiction world, but I don't think it qualifies as fantasy unless it has something supernatural going on - magic, supernatural beings, etc.
Anyway.
I'm falling on the side of dislike for the lead female. She's inconsistent, she makes terrible snap judgments, and she's falling in love with a complete dickhead. More on that in a minute. But basically, I can't get past the way Olina/Frost/Willow/who-the-fuck-ever (she goes by like 5983456 names in this series) allows herself to be treated. We get to see so many scenes of her being a badass - and that really plays out in this book, honestly - followed immediately by her being a doormat. Plus ... what is her plan? I mean, there's zero thought behind any action she takes - she pretty much just careens from encounter to encounter. I don't understand how she ever thought she was going to pop away for a couple days to investigate, and then pop back. I don't understand how she planned to track down the arrow ... she pretty much just wanders down the street asking every random person she encounters. Guys, I'm being literal - that is ACTUALLY what she does. I don't understand what her plan is when she decides to be, like, a cage-match fighter. What? No, really, why? How does this further ANY of her goals? How does she see any of this playing out?
The answer, unfortunately, is that when it comes to broad choices, she is TSTL. But it's weird because she can - and does - handle herself capably in other encounters. She seems to careen wildly between acting like 15 year old, and acting like a 25 year old. It is incredibly frustrating.
In this book, we meet and become attached to a whole new cast of characters. The good news is that I liked them all a lot more than I liked the dickheads from book 1 - I just don't really care for either court at all. I thought this was a good development, and I hoped it meant that the overbearing violent asshole (Javon) that seemed to be the future love interest was not going to be that at all. Honestly, a lot of this book played out like ... plot twist, he was just as much a bad guy as her mom!
Because you guys, he was.
He's been over-the-top violent towards her from the moment we met him. At first, it was fine - there was a question about whether she killed his brother. But then, when he clearly believes she loved his brother, he's still that way. He is constantly smashing into her room, pinning her to walls, ripping her veil off, shouting in her face, grabbing her around the arms and holding her off the ground to shout more... I mean, wtf, seriously. Plus, he knows her secret, but can he be a decent fucking human being about it? No. He screams at her that if she takes her veil off, he'll kill her, and he refuses to tell her why. JUST LIKE HER MOTHER. Then when she realizes why - she finally gets a look at her face (*eyeroll*) - she realizes he's been using her as a trump card. He knows her secret, and that puts him in a pretty strong position, both against her mother and also possibly as his little pet ruler that he can control via blackmail.
Yuck.
Then in this book, we see that he apparently considers a large swath of his own people - the outer rings folks - to be scum. He regularly rounds up the people in this fight club thing, and just ... has his guards kill them in this big dome, Gladiator style. What? Why?! Who does this?! This gets his guards killed. It gets all these people killed ... people he hasn't bothered to investigate or anything. He knows less than nothing about them. They are in a fight tournament thing, where the goal is to knock your opponent out - it's basically MMA fighting. And we spend the vast majority of this book in this location, where we discover that while, yes, there are some violent assholes (Slay, etc), the vast majority of the fighters are pretty cool, supportive, etc. But Jovan has his guards just round up everyone - including people on the sidelines (Crystal) - herd them to the dome, and then send guards in there endlessly until they are all dead.
Who the fuck does that? Is that supposed to be a character I like?
But Lina fights him. And fights for her friends. That's why I was happy, like yay! They're all evil, both rulers! Lina is going to bring down him, and then her mother!
But no. She doesn't. She fights, then goes back with him. Then lets him loop right back into yelling/shaking/pinning her. She plays with him like he's flirting, when he does it. And then she even sleeps with him. And she does that JUST AFTER finding out that he was deliberately leading the whole court to believe that she was his whore, so he could control her.
Gross.
I haven't seen a single goddamn redeemable thing about Jovan, but she can't keep away from him. She loves him. It kills me.
And then, lest you think well, maybe it's just one bad choice, but surely she has some self-respect ... then she has a conversation with the fucking guy who hired 3 people to sneak into her room at night and beat her nearly to death - he literally said to beat her to the edge of death. And he expresses that he feels bad about what he did. That's it. It makes him feel bad. And she forgives him. Without a moment of thought. Without a moment of consequence. She tries to help him hide that he was the guy who did it, even, but when that's found out, she comes to his defense.
This woman thinks so little of herself that I can't help but think little of her. And I hate it, because this could be a good story, but this is just utterly gross.
eireen's review
5.0
If you had read the first book and felt that too many characters were introduced, you'll be more surprised with this one. There will be much more additional characters here. At first, I though they were not important enough to remember. At least not all of them. But, well, I was wrong. Each of these characters has their own personality and they each develops as the storyline goes on.
The story itself though, it is still as exciting as the previous one and I definitely enjoyed reading this sequel. I have already knew that the main lead is definitely not a helpless delicate princess. But I just didn't see a lot of her action in the first book. It was simply not enough. But it's different with this second book though. The heroine finally has the opportunity to showcase her fighting skills. It's fully displayed here and let me tell you, she is awesome and she is kicking ass.
The only drawback of this book is it's abrupt ending. I'm still not a big fan of it. Another cliffhanger, of course, and I'm not even surprised that it has cliffhanger. It's normal for a series of books. But how the story was just cut and ended right 'there' (see I'm trying to avoid spilling any spoilers here), it's irritating. I'm reading the third book at the moment and I think I can expect this kind of ending again later.
The story itself though, it is still as exciting as the previous one and I definitely enjoyed reading this sequel. I have already knew that the main lead is definitely not a helpless delicate princess. But I just didn't see a lot of her action in the first book. It was simply not enough. But it's different with this second book though. The heroine finally has the opportunity to showcase her fighting skills. It's fully displayed here and let me tell you, she is awesome and she is kicking ass.
The only drawback of this book is it's abrupt ending. I'm still not a big fan of it. Another cliffhanger, of course, and I'm not even surprised that it has cliffhanger. It's normal for a series of books. But how the story was just cut and ended right 'there' (see I'm trying to avoid spilling any spoilers here), it's irritating. I'm reading the third book at the moment and I think I can expect this kind of ending again later.
curls's review
3.0
I was wrong. My time here hasn’t been a waste. I didn’t find what I wanted, but perhaps I’ve found what I need.
How I feel reading this book.
I love this series. I really do. But the first 30% of this book is so so hard. It takes a complete left turn, and I really wanted to get back to the main plot established in book one.
I get it. I really do. And all in all, it doesn’t drag forever. It just felt like it. And it’s not out of character of Olina to become a fighter, it’s established in book one.
So if you’re struggling with this book, it gets better. The series is excellent. Just keep on.
kellyyoungbl's review against another edition
4.0
Solid
I'm enjoying this series. There is a good amount of character development and world building. I wish there was a little bit more romance, but that's just a personal preference.
I'm enjoying this series. There is a good amount of character development and world building. I wish there was a little bit more romance, but that's just a personal preference.
cornflower12's review
adventurous
lighthearted
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? It's complicated
4.25