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A review by anneklein
Songs of Insurrection: A Legend of Tivara Story by J.C. Kang
Did not finish book.
1.0
*I received this as an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review. Thanks!*
DNFd at 20%. I really wanted to push myself to finish this, especially so that I would have evidence for the things I liked/didn’t like. Nonetheless, it increasingly felt like a chore to pick this up, and this to me is a sign that a book is not for me. I can say, however, that this 20% of the book was enough to figure out how the rest of it was going to go.
First of all, I hated the insta-love. I had never seen a book where the main character falls in love with the love interest SO QUICKLY. Not even romance novels do that. She is sixteen, but even at sixteen, I think kids have some sense, or so I want to believe. Sure, do all the stupid stuff you want, you’re a teen... but what I can’t believe is that this character immediately aligns with the political goals of a nation she had never seen in her life. We are supposed to believe that she is a princess, and even though she has been educated as a musician and not a diplomat, she surely should have some sense of politics... right?
But I’m not sure what’s going on with that, to be honest, because we don’t get explanations for anything. Anything! It’s like the author wanted to avoid worldbuilding info dumps, and so they treat the reader like they’ve read an encyclopedia’s worth of background content before embarking in the reading experience. I don’t know what Kaiya, the princess, is supposed to know and not know, because I know nothing about her life or what she’s supposed to do and be like. Apart from the fact she is going to be married off to some noble and she hates the idea, but when this foreign prince comes around she’s suddenly into him like it’s her only purpose.
Tying into that: there is no description at all. The maximum I spotted (and I know because I was paying attention) were two lines saying what colour and shape a room was. And a description of a dragon-shaped throne. Otherwise, no description. The reader is presented with action and dialogue, nonstop, but we are never shown what this world looks like, or what the characters dress like, or the kind of city we are in. If you’re telling me the princess is taking off an outer robe, tell me what the robe is like or what her outfit looks like now, at the very least! It made immersion in the world impossible and it meant I never cared for anything because I wasn’t truly introduced to it.
For the worldbuilding: I think the setting makes sense, sounds appealing and cool, and the premise is awesome too – I could make out some of the myths and legends of this nation which were certainly cool. We aren’t shown the world, though, and the author assumes the reader already knows it all, when it’s not the case. Additionally, some aspects felt very much pulled straight out of Dungeons & Dragons. The dwarf artificers making toys that are mentioned a couple of times, the stereotypical rogue, this foreign prince being trained as a Paladin (yeah, with a capital letter.) These elements alone aren’t necessarily connected to D&D, but unless you flesh them out and explain them, that’s what people are going to connect them to. For instance, in Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir (a book that I didn’t love, don’t get me wrong!), we are presented with “Cavaliers” and “Necromancers”, which initially sound very much like Fighters and Warlocks, but the author spends a while fleshing out the intricacies of it so it’s never stereotypical.
But I digress. My last point is on the writing style, which I have noted pretty much throughout this review but I think deserves a moment. It’s bad, I didn’t enjoy it. It’s clunky in the way it jumps from omniscience to character perspectives, and we aren’t shown the characters’ feelings either. The dialogue is repetitive and unnatural, and the action doesn’t read smoothly - I had a hard time figuring out what was going on during action scenes. Finally, I spotted quite a few grammar and punctuation errors, which usually I would be fine with when reading an ARC. This, however, is a book that is being released for the second time, so I expected the editors to be more careful with it.
Overall, Songs of Insurrection was stereotypical, hard to get through despite the writing not being dense or overly complicated, and to be honest, quite a disappointment.
DNFd at 20%. I really wanted to push myself to finish this, especially so that I would have evidence for the things I liked/didn’t like. Nonetheless, it increasingly felt like a chore to pick this up, and this to me is a sign that a book is not for me. I can say, however, that this 20% of the book was enough to figure out how the rest of it was going to go.
First of all, I hated the insta-love. I had never seen a book where the main character falls in love with the love interest SO QUICKLY. Not even romance novels do that. She is sixteen, but even at sixteen, I think kids have some sense, or so I want to believe. Sure, do all the stupid stuff you want, you’re a teen... but what I can’t believe is that this character immediately aligns with the political goals of a nation she had never seen in her life. We are supposed to believe that she is a princess, and even though she has been educated as a musician and not a diplomat, she surely should have some sense of politics... right?
But I’m not sure what’s going on with that, to be honest, because we don’t get explanations for anything. Anything! It’s like the author wanted to avoid worldbuilding info dumps, and so they treat the reader like they’ve read an encyclopedia’s worth of background content before embarking in the reading experience. I don’t know what Kaiya, the princess, is supposed to know and not know, because I know nothing about her life or what she’s supposed to do and be like. Apart from the fact she is going to be married off to some noble and she hates the idea, but when this foreign prince comes around she’s suddenly into him like it’s her only purpose.
Tying into that: there is no description at all. The maximum I spotted (and I know because I was paying attention) were two lines saying what colour and shape a room was. And a description of a dragon-shaped throne. Otherwise, no description. The reader is presented with action and dialogue, nonstop, but we are never shown what this world looks like, or what the characters dress like, or the kind of city we are in. If you’re telling me the princess is taking off an outer robe, tell me what the robe is like or what her outfit looks like now, at the very least! It made immersion in the world impossible and it meant I never cared for anything because I wasn’t truly introduced to it.
For the worldbuilding: I think the setting makes sense, sounds appealing and cool, and the premise is awesome too – I could make out some of the myths and legends of this nation which were certainly cool. We aren’t shown the world, though, and the author assumes the reader already knows it all, when it’s not the case. Additionally, some aspects felt very much pulled straight out of Dungeons & Dragons. The dwarf artificers making toys that are mentioned a couple of times, the stereotypical rogue, this foreign prince being trained as a Paladin (yeah, with a capital letter.) These elements alone aren’t necessarily connected to D&D, but unless you flesh them out and explain them, that’s what people are going to connect them to. For instance, in Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir (a book that I didn’t love, don’t get me wrong!), we are presented with “Cavaliers” and “Necromancers”, which initially sound very much like Fighters and Warlocks, but the author spends a while fleshing out the intricacies of it so it’s never stereotypical.
But I digress. My last point is on the writing style, which I have noted pretty much throughout this review but I think deserves a moment. It’s bad, I didn’t enjoy it. It’s clunky in the way it jumps from omniscience to character perspectives, and we aren’t shown the characters’ feelings either. The dialogue is repetitive and unnatural, and the action doesn’t read smoothly - I had a hard time figuring out what was going on during action scenes. Finally, I spotted quite a few grammar and punctuation errors, which usually I would be fine with when reading an ARC. This, however, is a book that is being released for the second time, so I expected the editors to be more careful with it.
Overall, Songs of Insurrection was stereotypical, hard to get through despite the writing not being dense or overly complicated, and to be honest, quite a disappointment.