Reviews tagging 'Physical abuse'

Court of Ice and Ash by LJ Andrews

1 review

koistyfishy's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

I am not sure what the title means to the story as neither court really used Ice or Ash…but overall from a storyline perspective this sequel was better than the first book, but I’m a little underwhelmed and feel this is more a 3.5 than a solid 4 that book 1 was.

Slight spoilers from Curse of Shadows and Thorns 

This book starts off almost exactly where book 1 ended. Valen (god I hate his real name, Legion Grey is just soooo much better) does not want to be the King the land has chosen and instead has his heart set on his quest for vengeance and revenge against the Timoran’s. Since Valen basically chose his revenge over Elise, they went there separate paths which leads to Elise and Siv needing to prove their trustworthiness to the Agitators. Through a stupid heist Halvar is captured and taken to the Fury Quarries. Meanwhile Ari, the head of the Agitators, a Fae who has proclaimed himself the rightful King, has use for the “Blood Wraith” (not knowing Legion Grey is also the Blood Wraith AND the Night Prince) and knows that Elise would be the key to persuade him to join the Agitators. So in order to get the Blood Wraith on their side the Agitator’s attempt to rescue Halvar and the fates of our two lovers are entwined again as Valen also has plans to rescue Halvar on the same night…

This book introduces a split POV for both Valen and Elise and while it does help give a little more character development for the two, I often found myself confused by whose internal monologue I was reading. Often the voice of the characters blended together a little two easily or weren’t as distinctly different that I had to think hard or reread sections to remember if this was from Valen or Elise’s POV.

What makes this book a little lacklustre is a few things.

  1. The romance is lacklustre. Nothing happens between the characters for almost 50% of the book because they are both constantly wishy washy about what they want and feel and try to stay away. But one touch and then they kiss to go back to avoiding each other like the plague. It felt like they spent too long fighting what they felt for each other and then like a light bulb it just switched back on - in almost instalovie vibes that was a bit unbelievable. 🤢
  2. The pace of the plot is strange, it goes from a really good pace that I was lapping up, to being incredibly slow and moving nowhere to again speeding through the end. 
  3. The plot remains too predictable even for my taste of reading the same tropes over and over, that it almost feels childish how predictable the “twist” was. 
  4. The plot also really doesn’t go anywhere, it’s almost like most of this could have just been added to book 1 (to make it longer than it was) and made this a duology, instead of have us suffer through a book with “middle book syndrome.”
  5. Elise’s character feels flat and emotionless. Whist I understand that Valen betrayed her and broke her heart, she deals with this by feeling nothing. It ends up making her a very uninteresting character that I didn’t want to read her POV because it was constantly the same pity party in her head about how Valen didn’t chose her and how she couldn’t understand why he didn’t want to be King and how she had the emotions of a potato.
  6. The soft attempt of a Love Triangle was almost there and as much as I don’t really like Love Triangles it would have added a little more angst to an already drawn out plot that might have given it that little extra thing it needed to not feel boring. 
  7. Valen’s Name… have I mentioned already how I don’t like the new one? 

Overall slightly disappointed in this book, I still devoured it in a day so it’s a really easy read and I didn’t have as many frustrations in the writing as I had with book 1, so the editing seems a little more polished. I am going to give the last book a try but if it’s underwhelming as well I don’t think I’d continue with the story.
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