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A review by lexquiv
We Free the Stars by Hafsah Faizal
1.0
I don’t DNF books. I should, but I can’t. That said, this is the closest I have come to DNFing in YEARS.
I didn’t love book one and if it was a trilogy I wouldn’t have continued. However, there was POTENTIAL in book one and I thought I could get through one more to see how things went. Regret. The ending sucks so if that’s what you’re reading for don’t waste your time.
Reviews are infrequent for me as well so this will probably be a jumbled mess and might blur the lines between book 1 and 2 but I just have to get some of these thoughts out.
The writing is bad. It is so flowery and I love flowery, when it’s done well. Unfortunately in 9 out of 10 instances in this book it is not done well. It is repetitive and focuses so much on constructing an elegant sentence that the meaning of what is being described seems to be actually forgotten. Let me emphasize repetitive again while we’re here. The ashy eyes and icy eyes, kill me.
One of the biggest flaws of these books is that they tell you when they should show you. The number of times a character says something and then what the character has said is described as amazingly witty… I wish I counted. The kicker is that IT WAS NEVER ACTUALLY WITTY. It’s like the author thinks if she tells us they were witty we’ll be tricked into thinking they were. All of the characters actually had a notable lack of wit.
This book bored me. It was hard to get through. But it kept building and building and then I realized I was only 100 pages from the end and I thought YAY but also - how?? There were so many loose ends. A terrible, rushed, predictable ending, that’s how. I won’t get into spoilers, but everything that happened was predictable and much of it was disappointing.
I love an enemies to lovers and in book one I was there for a Nasir/Zafira romance. She built it up in book one. It was time, one way or another. And then she just ripped the rug out from under them and thought this worked the first time, let’s do it again!?!? I was completely over them by the time this ended. Zafira was disgustingly indecisive, Nasir’s lack of self worth grew exhausting. Also, Nasir made no sense. At some point in this book he randomly became sexually confident (based on what? One previous relationship? THIS DOESN’T FIT HIS PERSONALITY) and would make daring comments and kiss Zafira, but still would never ever speak to her about what was happening. It was just tiresome and didn’t work. Additionally time drug on and they never even had a conversation… their feelings became more and more far fetched. I had no investment by the end.
The descriptions and implications involving Yasmine and Altair at the end were simply weird. I was looking forward to them finally meeting after it was narrowly avoided so many times, but it never happened.
What the silver witch did: predictable. What Nasir did: predictable. The end of the fight against the lion: disappointing. Zafira’s relationship with the Jawarat: disappointing.
The jawarat added nothing to the book but words.
This had a lot of potential to address issues like racism and sexism and it mostly just brushed over these with quick unbelievable “solutions”. There wasn’t enough about the caliph’s secret daughter, and the dealings with the ifrit at the end felt shallow, disingenuous, and way too brief.
I’m sorry this is quick written and I’m likely forgetting lots of things. TLDR I really didn’t like this book.
I didn’t love book one and if it was a trilogy I wouldn’t have continued. However, there was POTENTIAL in book one and I thought I could get through one more to see how things went. Regret. The ending sucks so if that’s what you’re reading for don’t waste your time.
Reviews are infrequent for me as well so this will probably be a jumbled mess and might blur the lines between book 1 and 2 but I just have to get some of these thoughts out.
The writing is bad. It is so flowery and I love flowery, when it’s done well. Unfortunately in 9 out of 10 instances in this book it is not done well. It is repetitive and focuses so much on constructing an elegant sentence that the meaning of what is being described seems to be actually forgotten. Let me emphasize repetitive again while we’re here. The ashy eyes and icy eyes, kill me.
One of the biggest flaws of these books is that they tell you when they should show you. The number of times a character says something and then what the character has said is described as amazingly witty… I wish I counted. The kicker is that IT WAS NEVER ACTUALLY WITTY. It’s like the author thinks if she tells us they were witty we’ll be tricked into thinking they were. All of the characters actually had a notable lack of wit.
This book bored me. It was hard to get through. But it kept building and building and then I realized I was only 100 pages from the end and I thought YAY but also - how?? There were so many loose ends. A terrible, rushed, predictable ending, that’s how. I won’t get into spoilers, but everything that happened was predictable and much of it was disappointing.
I love an enemies to lovers and in book one I was there for a Nasir/Zafira romance. She built it up in book one. It was time, one way or another. And then she just ripped the rug out from under them and thought this worked the first time, let’s do it again!?!? I was completely over them by the time this ended. Zafira was disgustingly indecisive, Nasir’s lack of self worth grew exhausting. Also, Nasir made no sense. At some point in this book he randomly became sexually confident (based on what? One previous relationship? THIS DOESN’T FIT HIS PERSONALITY) and would make daring comments and kiss Zafira, but still would never ever speak to her about what was happening. It was just tiresome and didn’t work. Additionally time drug on and they never even had a conversation… their feelings became more and more far fetched. I had no investment by the end.
The descriptions and implications involving Yasmine and Altair at the end were simply weird. I was looking forward to them finally meeting after it was narrowly avoided so many times, but it never happened.
What the silver witch did: predictable. What Nasir did: predictable. The end of the fight against the lion: disappointing. Zafira’s relationship with the Jawarat: disappointing.
The jawarat added nothing to the book but words.
This had a lot of potential to address issues like racism and sexism and it mostly just brushed over these with quick unbelievable “solutions”. There wasn’t enough about the caliph’s secret daughter, and the dealings with the ifrit at the end felt shallow, disingenuous, and way too brief.
I’m sorry this is quick written and I’m likely forgetting lots of things. TLDR I really didn’t like this book.