A review by alexblackreads
The Realms of the Gods by Tamora Pierce

3.0

Edit: Nope, couldn't do it. Knocked it down to 3 stars.

I was disappointed by this book. As a kid, this was one of my favorites of the series and I remember reading this on its own, just picking it off my shelf at random because I loved it so much. But honestly, it didn't quite live up to that the way the rest of the series did. I did still thoroughly enjoy it (4 stars is not a rating I give lightly), but I was expecting another 5. I found it a little dull, and I just wasn't all that interested in the Divine Realms, where a lot of this book took place. It felt like it was avoiding the action in Tortall and then once they did return, it felt a bit disjointed.

But my overall biggest problem was the romance. Daine is 16 in this book and the love interest is 30. I hadn't forgotten that, but somehow in my head I'd aged her up a bit and closed the gap. As an adult, that's disgusting to me and I couldn't get past that. If this wasn't already a favorite, I probably wouldn't have even rated it this high. As it was, I actively ignored the romance and mostly just pretended it didn't exist.

*tagged as favorites as it's one of my favorite series