There’s this book, a Romantasy (Romance + Fantasy) that is a huge seller and caught the attention of book banners who don’t want anyone to read a book they don’t like where “don’t like” means anything about experience as brown or LGBTQ+ because we must protect their white kids from developing empathy. Heaven forfend, what if their kids don’t grow up to give Nazi salutes?
As a result most, if not all, of the books in the series have been banned. I finally decided to read the first book in the series because thousands of reviews means this story flashed into public notice.
Long story short (Hah!!) this book was a incredible slog to get through. The writing was meh. I mean really really meh. Overuse of certain words and phrases, almost no emotional depth. The story was convoluted and often contradicted the world building. The world building was also meh but not the worst I’ve encountered in my reading years. Most of the time I felt like the story frequently butted up against the informational border past which the author did not imagine. Locations just popped up for convenience with no geographical or even magical explanation of what they were.
At roughly the halfway point I starting skimming and then skipping most chapters because I DID NOT CARE. I knew what would happen, for one thing, and this author never once surprised in that regard.
Personal preference here, but I tend to dislike books about magic that strip the protagonists of their magic. I can deal with it if it doesn’t last long, but in this book, for the majority of the time, the magical characters have little to no magical power — unless of course, the plot demanded otherwise. See above re meh world building. How, with a straight authorial face, can you describe your magical protagonist as unbelievably powerful AND tell us his powers are so limited it’s a strain to do the basics? And how can this magical midget then do incredible magic when called for by the plot?
The story spends a lot of time on events that ended up having zero impact on the story or characters. Checkov’s gun is a real thing. (Essentially, don’t introduce a gun in Act I that doesn’t get fired by Act 3.) Why give a protagonist a talent that is mentioned ALL THE TIME without also handing us a pay off for the constant reminder?
And let’s talk about the Fantasy characters. It’s about the Fae, but the Fae are also (some of them) shapeshifters for no reason that matters. It’s like fairies, only also werewolves or demons. For reasons.
The author is a better writer than, say, Kristin Ashley, who can rarely cobble together a coherent sentence, but at least Ashley understands story. I understand why her fans love her books. She delivers massively on story and emotion. This author does not.
Now lets talk about the plot (not tropes, the plot). The plot develops like this:
Female protagonist is warned not to do something. Female protagonist immediately goes and does what she was told was dangerous while taking no precautions. She’s the epitome of TSTL. (To Stupid To Live.) Jesus. If this is what the edited version of the book is like, just how bad was the unedited version?
The people who warn her are also at fault because they fail, time and again, to explain the actual nature of the danger. They fail as well to explain the basics of the Fae world she’s in. She’s in a strange and magical world and if she wasn’t TSTL surely she would know that there are dangers to her that she does not know about and that perhaps she ought to take some precaution or ask some questions.
Anyway, I hated this book.
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