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clovetra's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
this book was a TRIP. at some points it was enjoyable, but a lot more often than not with this book it made almost zero sense.
this book’s worldbuilding and characters really sucked me in to begin with. the world of crath, alongside livira as an incredibly likeable protagonist really worked. evar’s world also sucked me in, but i will say compared to livira, he was quite boring as a character. he lacked deep characterisation, and alongside someone as spunky as livira his chapters fell flat.
i think this book’s biggest downfall is although its almost 600 pages, it feels like it barely touches on the world of the story, and instead focuses on characters, which is all find and dandy if your worldbuilding is up to par. this book jumped steps 1, 2 &3 and immediately ran to step 4 regarding its world. like even in the first chapter the dust isn’t properly explained, and you kind of just have to piece together what’s going on. like sabbers - are they human? we’re told at some points, yes…. then no…. then like 70% into the book a nonhuman description is given…. but then yes they’re human. it felt like a battle between each concept as it would be explained one way, and then expanded on when the foundation wasn’t properly explored.
also the amount of plot twists…. im a girl who loves plot twists, even if i predict them. what i don’t love is that this book is so complex and fails to fully explain the rules of its world that the plot twists literally don’t make sense, or feel like they’ve just been added for shock value. like once we got to jumping portals within portals and assistants and travelling back and forth…. after a while everything was twisting in on itself too much and seemed to be breaking the laws of this world’s universe i had no idea what was happening. this was probably the most egregious in the last 20% of the book. before that, i could reasonably understand what was going on. but in the last 100 pages or so i think this book really lost the plot… literally.
and the ending too….. i don’t even know what happened. like i do…. but gun to my head i couldn’t *explain* it.
i really had fun reading this in the first half, but after that point i think too much was happening at once, it didn’t let me sit & digest what i was reading before another plot point that wasn’t fully fleshed out was introduced.
this sounds like such a mean review but i actually did enjoy myself reading this! before the halfway mark i was sure this would be a 4-star for me. but idk the way the second half of the book was….. not a fan 🙁
at this point im not even too sure if i’d want to finish this series. in one way im so attached to my girl livira i want to know what happened to her, but honestly i cant say i want to subject myself to another 600 pages of poor worldbuilding.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Confinement, Racial slurs, Racism, Violence, War, and Classism
Moderate: Cursing, Death, Trafficking, Kidnapping, Death of parent, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, and Colonisation
Minor: Child death, Genocide, and Grief
aseel_reads's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
What a meta read this was. A really well done time loop/travel story. All the little reveals had me gasping aloud and I feel immense sadness for our main characters. I also liked the little tidbits of our world reflected in the library and just the whole "whose the real enemy" thought experiment
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Racial slurs, Violence, Xenophobia, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Abandonment, War, and Injury/Injury detail
onthesamepage's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
ARC provided by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
This book did not need to be 570+ pages long.
I've read from Mark Lawrence before, specifically Red Sister, and that's a series I fully intend to continue. I remember really enjoying his writing and the way the story developed, and went into this expecting to have a great time.
Sadly, I did not.
There is so much repetition in this book. I was willing to give the author the benefit of the doubt initially, hoping that, at some point, the repetition would be shown to have some mysterious purpose that I just couldn't grasp yet. But it serves none. Here's one example:
This book did not need to be 570+ pages long.
I've read from Mark Lawrence before, specifically Red Sister, and that's a series I fully intend to continue. I remember really enjoying his writing and the way the story developed, and went into this expecting to have a great time.
Sadly, I did not.
There is so much repetition in this book. I was willing to give the author the benefit of the doubt initially, hoping that, at some point, the repetition would be shown to have some mysterious purpose that I just couldn't grasp yet. But it serves none. Here's one example:
The days following the destruction of an Escape were the ones when another Escape was most likely to free itself from the Mechanism. The Soldier would stand guard.
One flip of the page later, this is followed by:
The destruction of one Escape often presaged the appearance of another, and this was the place they’d appear.
This is just one example, but it happened a lot. There are also multiple instances where we flash back to an earlier time just so we can see the exact details of how the characters came to be where they are, instead of just moving the story along. All this made the reading experience more tedious than it should have been. Because underneath all the repetition and needless meandering, there's a solid plot and a compelling mystery.
I always make it a point to mention both positive and negative things about a book in my 3 star reviews, but for the life of me I could barely think of anything positive to say aside from, "his writing is nice", and "the two main characters were interesting and I loved following Livira". And that says something when a book is this long, and the start of a series to boot. The thing is, I don't know if there's enough mystery or plot left for an entire trilogy. Sure, not everything gets explained to us, but by the end I felt like I had a solid grasp on how this world works and how things tie together, even though not everything is spelled out. One of the big themes is how history repeats itself. The story jumps around a couple of timelines, which means I already got a glimpse of the past. Sure, it doesn't fully explain how Evar came to be, but the seeds are there, and I don't know if I'm interested enough to read another 1000+ pages to finish the series. I'm not saying I know for sure that I'm right about everything in this world—I'm sure the author will add new elements that I haven't thought of yet. But as of the end of this book, I just don't see enough potential in the plot for an entire trilogy.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gore, Racial slurs, Racism, Violence, and War
Moderate: Classism
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