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A review by melike
The Bronzed Beasts by Roshani Chokshi
1.25
very rarely have i read a bigger load of bullshit than this.
more than half of this book was enrique sulking and turning his anger at séverin into his only personality trait. laila was equally annoying. their whole characters revolved around how mad they were at séverin. CONSTANT talk about how they would never forgive him and how terrible he is and and and. i literally spent almost the entire book irritated as hell. and then when séverin tries to explain himself and apologize, they don‘t even let the man talk. i was mostly irritated by him myself up until the very end of the second book, but the way the other characters‘ anger was depicted had me siding with him.
during the last 1/3 of the book, the plot finally started moving forward and it actually got interesting. that enjoyment lasted for only a few chapters though because everything went from 100 to 0 REAL QUICK. that ending was one of the dumbest endings i have ever read. it simply did not FIT into this story, and there was absolutely no coherence. as i said, it was a huge load of bullshit.
also, i feel like the characters changed their personalities a hundred times throughout the books. i would not call it development per se, because they just kept going back and forth between personalities. the only consistent one was hypnos, who was also the only character who didn‘t piss me off at all throughout the whole series, bless him.
there was also little to no proper romantic build-up in this entire series, but especially this book. there was no romance, and then suddenly there was romance. and i couldn‘t love any of the ships because they just felt so lackluster.
lastly, i think there are several gaps in the story, and a few things that are just left unanswered, which is something i dislike a lot. we are just thrown a piece of information, and it‘s like the author just expects us to know what it means and how it came to be without giving us any context or explanation.
let me give you a few examples (some
spoilers ahead, the end of the spoilers have been tagged a little further down):
- at the end of the first book, the matriarch tells hypnos the order tested séverin and it turned out that he was not the heir of house vanth. however, in this one, séverin states the order offered him "his inheritance" again. so does that mean the matriarch lied to protect séverin‘s bloodline? or does the order just have the wrong information? the only thing you can do is guess which one it is, but we are not given a definitive answer.
- in the first book, it‘s stated that tristan had a matching scar with séverin on his hand, the latter of which we know is because of the order‘s test. i was really hoping that detail would be followed up, but it was simply pointed out once only to not be explained at all.
- the entire relationship of enrique, zofia and hypnos is confusing as hell because nothing is properly explained there either. i GUESS enrique and zofia are together, and PROBABLY get married and have children, but hypnos is said to be with them as well. and just... why? like does hypnos not do anything else in his life? find love? ANYTHING??? we literally get no proper information whatsoever which i personally find very annoying because it‘s all so unclear.
END OF SPOILERS
i’m not even going to go into detail about that ending, especially with séverin and laila, because as previously mentioned, it was ridiculous and dumb as hell. i thought it was all building up for an epic conclusion only to get this instead. overall, i was disappointed by this. after the ending of the second book i had hopes for this one, and it just ended up as one badly written pile of clownery.
more than half of this book was enrique sulking and turning his anger at séverin into his only personality trait. laila was equally annoying. their whole characters revolved around how mad they were at séverin. CONSTANT talk about how they would never forgive him and how terrible he is and and and. i literally spent almost the entire book irritated as hell. and then when séverin tries to explain himself and apologize, they don‘t even let the man talk. i was mostly irritated by him myself up until the very end of the second book, but the way the other characters‘ anger was depicted had me siding with him.
during the last 1/3 of the book, the plot finally started moving forward and it actually got interesting. that enjoyment lasted for only a few chapters though because everything went from 100 to 0 REAL QUICK. that ending was one of the dumbest endings i have ever read. it simply did not FIT into this story, and there was absolutely no coherence. as i said, it was a huge load of bullshit.
also, i feel like the characters changed their personalities a hundred times throughout the books. i would not call it development per se, because they just kept going back and forth between personalities. the only consistent one was hypnos, who was also the only character who didn‘t piss me off at all throughout the whole series, bless him.
there was also little to no proper romantic build-up in this entire series, but especially this book. there was no romance, and then suddenly there was romance. and i couldn‘t love any of the ships because they just felt so lackluster.
lastly, i think there are several gaps in the story, and a few things that are just left unanswered, which is something i dislike a lot. we are just thrown a piece of information, and it‘s like the author just expects us to know what it means and how it came to be without giving us any context or explanation.
let me give you a few examples (some
spoilers ahead, the end of the spoilers have been tagged a little further down):
- at the end of the first book, the matriarch tells hypnos the order tested séverin and it turned out that he was not the heir of house vanth. however, in this one, séverin states the order offered him "his inheritance" again. so does that mean the matriarch lied to protect séverin‘s bloodline? or does the order just have the wrong information? the only thing you can do is guess which one it is, but we are not given a definitive answer.
- in the first book, it‘s stated that tristan had a matching scar with séverin on his hand, the latter of which we know is because of the order‘s test. i was really hoping that detail would be followed up, but it was simply pointed out once only to not be explained at all.
- the entire relationship of enrique, zofia and hypnos is confusing as hell because nothing is properly explained there either. i GUESS enrique and zofia are together, and PROBABLY get married and have children, but hypnos is said to be with them as well. and just... why? like does hypnos not do anything else in his life? find love? ANYTHING??? we literally get no proper information whatsoever which i personally find very annoying because it‘s all so unclear.
END OF SPOILERS
i’m not even going to go into detail about that ending, especially with séverin and laila, because as previously mentioned, it was ridiculous and dumb as hell. i thought it was all building up for an epic conclusion only to get this instead. overall, i was disappointed by this. after the ending of the second book i had hopes for this one, and it just ended up as one badly written pile of clownery.