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A review by paradoxically
Brightly Woven by Alexandra Bracken
2.0
Brightly Woven starts off quickly and hardly lets you catch your breath in the meantime. Sydelle, the main character, is a seemingly ordinary girl living in a village that hasn't seen rain in ten years, with a talent at weaving. She's young, fairly ignorant of politics and the state of her country, though she soon finds herself caught up in a giant mess as North, a wizard, spirits her off. This is against her will, but for good reason, as her village is soon to be occupied by an enemy country, and North needs Sydelle's help in getting the word out to the queen and Wizard Guard.
The first problem I had with the book was how jerky it was. You get Sydelle and her somewhat boring life, then you suddenly read about North blowing in and soldiers right at the doorstep. Then it hops and skips to North getting Syd to repair his cloak, then pretty much grabbing her and running (with her parent's blessings). You get Syd throwing a fit (though as North is pretty much saving her from the terror of occupancy by the enemy, I had little tolerance for it), then she suddenly settles in, takes off, and is ducking and weaving around like a pro. Then she's back to being irrational.
Which I try to tolerate because it is understandable, considering the circumstances, but the way she goes about it is still highly annoying.
None of the characters are endearing. Syd is argumentative and makes me want to tear out my hair and North is just as bad if not worse. I hold no tolerance for idiotic inscrutableness when they would all be better off if North just told Syd a few bits of information. Withholding information for no good reason other than the author wanting the male lead to be somewhat mysterious just makes me mad. Then again, I have less tolerance for a person who expects people to do things just because they have the power (or she thinks they do, when she really has no idea). It's easy to say it's someone else's obligation to clean a mess up when you're not the one people are looking to. And let's not forget about how one can die in the meantime and whatnot. It's infuriating.
The details are sparse if not nonexistent in parts. The world is very thinly fleshed out and everything just rings shallow. On the upside, the latter half of the book was better than the first half, but you can't have one crappy half of a book and one almost decent half of a book and expect a person to like it. Everything is rather predictable and shallow.
It wasn't completely horrible, even if I made it out to be so in my review. The latter half was a lot better than the beginning half. If it had been like that throughout the entire book, I would have thought a lot better of it. Still. There were a lot of missed opportunities and chances to flesh things out a bit. 2 stars.
The first problem I had with the book was how jerky it was. You get Sydelle and her somewhat boring life, then you suddenly read about North blowing in and soldiers right at the doorstep. Then it hops and skips to North getting Syd to repair his cloak, then pretty much grabbing her and running (with her parent's blessings). You get Syd throwing a fit (though as North is pretty much saving her from the terror of occupancy by the enemy, I had little tolerance for it), then she suddenly settles in, takes off, and is ducking and weaving around like a pro. Then she's back to being irrational.
Which I try to tolerate because it is understandable, considering the circumstances, but the way she goes about it is still highly annoying.
None of the characters are endearing. Syd is argumentative and makes me want to tear out my hair and North is just as bad if not worse. I hold no tolerance for idiotic inscrutableness when they would all be better off if North just told Syd a few bits of information. Withholding information for no good reason other than the author wanting the male lead to be somewhat mysterious just makes me mad. Then again, I have less tolerance for a person who expects people to do things just because they have the power (or she thinks they do, when she really has no idea). It's easy to say it's someone else's obligation to clean a mess up when you're not the one people are looking to. And let's not forget about how one can die in the meantime and whatnot. It's infuriating.
The details are sparse if not nonexistent in parts. The world is very thinly fleshed out and everything just rings shallow. On the upside, the latter half of the book was better than the first half, but you can't have one crappy half of a book and one almost decent half of a book and expect a person to like it. Everything is rather predictable and shallow.
It wasn't completely horrible, even if I made it out to be so in my review. The latter half was a lot better than the beginning half. If it had been like that throughout the entire book, I would have thought a lot better of it. Still. There were a lot of missed opportunities and chances to flesh things out a bit. 2 stars.