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A review by kittyg
The Braided Path by Chris Wooding
3.0
I'd give this whole series a very solid 3.5*s overall. Whilst I enjoyed all the volumes and the overall plot, I think from having read The Ember Blade, which is Chris Woodings' later epic fantasy, that one is a massively tighter overall story, but this one shows the beginnings.
This world is made up of Aberrants (people who are magic/disfigured/different) and 'normal' people. The Aberrants are hunted by the Weavers who are magic and work for the nobility, supposedly...
The Weavers of this world are able to dive into the weave of the world and manipulate the strings (a.k.a magic) and yet wherever they do the get more corrupted and their bodies disfigure and twist.
We follow Kaiku, a young daughter of a noble family who are all killed right at the start of the book. She is rescued by her handmaiden, who turns out to be more than meets the eye, but Kaiku soon realised there's more to her too.
This is a big political story with a whole lot of different people bouncing off of one another, and trying for the throne/the leadership positions. There's a lot of focus on whether the Weavers are good or not, and also a few new rebel groups who are pretty intent on destroying the Weavers.
In general, I think the pacing isn't bad and each book builds on the previous, however, I also think that some of the things could be tightened up. I definitely enjoyed it, but it wasn't quite as epic as I would have liked to see, but still had a lot of magic and strong female characters. I think it's missing the slightly more character-focused side I've come to enjoy from other Wooding books. 3.5*s overall for all three books.
This world is made up of Aberrants (people who are magic/disfigured/different) and 'normal' people. The Aberrants are hunted by the Weavers who are magic and work for the nobility, supposedly...
The Weavers of this world are able to dive into the weave of the world and manipulate the strings (a.k.a magic) and yet wherever they do the get more corrupted and their bodies disfigure and twist.
We follow Kaiku, a young daughter of a noble family who are all killed right at the start of the book. She is rescued by her handmaiden, who turns out to be more than meets the eye, but Kaiku soon realised there's more to her too.
This is a big political story with a whole lot of different people bouncing off of one another, and trying for the throne/the leadership positions. There's a lot of focus on whether the Weavers are good or not, and also a few new rebel groups who are pretty intent on destroying the Weavers.
In general, I think the pacing isn't bad and each book builds on the previous, however, I also think that some of the things could be tightened up. I definitely enjoyed it, but it wasn't quite as epic as I would have liked to see, but still had a lot of magic and strong female characters. I think it's missing the slightly more character-focused side I've come to enjoy from other Wooding books. 3.5*s overall for all three books.