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A review by sarahetc
Divine Rivals by Rebecca Ross
3.0
I rarely read new, popular books while they're new and popular. And for the last decade or so, I have really tried to avoid reading series until most, if not all, of the books are published. So here is a new, popular book, labeled #1 from the get-go, and I didn't really stop to think what I was doing. I needed an audio book, had some credits, and went for it.
Divine Rivals is pretty typical. The setting seems to be a one-off of turn of the 20th century England, as newspapers and near-mass communication was becoming a thing. Iris Winnow, our plucky, almost-but-not-quite Mary Sue heroine, is competing against Roman Kitt, our dashing-but-snobby, not-quite Gary Stu possible villain, for the position of Columnist at the Oath Gazette, the "best" paper in their city. There is banter, and bickering, and a decent amount of UST for two characters you just met and don't really know. There's also a war on, prompted by the immortal escapades of two of the Gods of the... area? The area? The religion? The country? The World?
And this is where things get a little slipshod. Ross is writing a romance novel, but she needs her characters to be able both be torn apart by war and to be able to communicate in spite of war. So she's got to write some magic. In this case she writes magic typewriters. The story behind them is fleshed out well enough, with even a tertiary, would-be-museum-curator giving us well-written background. But aside from that, we know very, very little about the world, the magic system (is there a system or is it just three typewriters?), the pantheon, or anything.
Of course, Kitt wins the Columnist position with the article Iris helped him co-write. And Iris's life takes a turn for the worse, moving her to the Nothing to Lose point, allowing her to make full, best use of her Magic Typewriter (which sounds so dumb when I type it out, but I promise it very nearly almost just about works). And, of course, that is not the end of her relationship with Kitt.
But the rest of the book is the war, and the fight, and various shifting of persons and troops, and warning signals and showing-not-telling (props!) about the magical monsters used on either side of the war. Enva is good. Dacre is bad. Everyone good fights for Enva. Everyone bad fights for Dacre and he sends mean dogs to the town. And that's the rest of the novel.
Does the romance shake out like it needs to? Absolutely. Does the magic system or any of the fantasy aspect of the work ever get explicated? Absolutely not. You're getting new information to add to your mental map in the last five pages. Because clearly there is a sequel. This seems to be a new genre-- YA Romantasy. Okay. Whatever you need to do to get the books to the market and the libraries. But I, for one, will go forward with modified expectations of it as a whole. I'd like to think I went in thinking fantasy would make up for the cheesier aspects of romance that I don't enjoy as much. But this is all cheese, with just enough fantasy to make the mcguffins work. Add to that an 1890-1910 sort of cultural more, that inexplicably includes certain aspects of third-wave feminism like women being military leaders and plenty of signals that homosexual relationships are totally normal and accepted, and it's a book that seems to be written for Book Tok and its short memory and even shorter attention span.
I need to go look up when the next one is out, because of course I want to know what happens. Jeez.
Divine Rivals is pretty typical. The setting seems to be a one-off of turn of the 20th century England, as newspapers and near-mass communication was becoming a thing. Iris Winnow, our plucky, almost-but-not-quite Mary Sue heroine, is competing against Roman Kitt, our dashing-but-snobby, not-quite Gary Stu possible villain, for the position of Columnist at the Oath Gazette, the "best" paper in their city. There is banter, and bickering, and a decent amount of UST for two characters you just met and don't really know. There's also a war on, prompted by the immortal escapades of two of the Gods of the... area? The area? The religion? The country? The World?
And this is where things get a little slipshod. Ross is writing a romance novel, but she needs her characters to be able both be torn apart by war and to be able to communicate in spite of war. So she's got to write some magic. In this case she writes magic typewriters. The story behind them is fleshed out well enough, with even a tertiary, would-be-museum-curator giving us well-written background. But aside from that, we know very, very little about the world, the magic system (is there a system or is it just three typewriters?), the pantheon, or anything.
Of course, Kitt wins the Columnist position with the article Iris helped him co-write. And Iris's life takes a turn for the worse, moving her to the Nothing to Lose point, allowing her to make full, best use of her Magic Typewriter (which sounds so dumb when I type it out, but I promise it very nearly almost just about works). And, of course, that is not the end of her relationship with Kitt.
But the rest of the book is the war, and the fight, and various shifting of persons and troops, and warning signals and showing-not-telling (props!) about the magical monsters used on either side of the war. Enva is good. Dacre is bad. Everyone good fights for Enva. Everyone bad fights for Dacre and he sends mean dogs to the town. And that's the rest of the novel.
Does the romance shake out like it needs to? Absolutely. Does the magic system or any of the fantasy aspect of the work ever get explicated? Absolutely not. You're getting new information to add to your mental map in the last five pages. Because clearly there is a sequel. This seems to be a new genre-- YA Romantasy. Okay. Whatever you need to do to get the books to the market and the libraries. But I, for one, will go forward with modified expectations of it as a whole. I'd like to think I went in thinking fantasy would make up for the cheesier aspects of romance that I don't enjoy as much. But this is all cheese, with just enough fantasy to make the mcguffins work. Add to that an 1890-1910 sort of cultural more, that inexplicably includes certain aspects of third-wave feminism like women being military leaders and plenty of signals that homosexual relationships are totally normal and accepted, and it's a book that seems to be written for Book Tok and its short memory and even shorter attention span.
I need to go look up when the next one is out, because of course I want to know what happens. Jeez.