A review by szilvvvv
The Art of Prophecy by Wesley Chu

adventurous slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated

4.25

This book surprised me in the best way. I have previously not been the biggest fan of Wesley Chu's writing, but I had to check out this one and I'm so glad I did! This book takes place in an asian inspired world, where we follow characters from opposing sides of a war. I liked how I could fully take in the worldbuilding from the perspectives of multiple characters. Some of them I loved, some of them I loved to hate, but they all brought something to the story, all had motivations and struggles that made it all very intriguing.  As others have pointed out the synopsis is a bit misleading, as this book is not about the mentor-mentee  relationship between Taishi and Jian, their paths diverge pretty early on in the book, although we still follow each of their perspectives. Instead we get a book that starts with jian's life being uprooted and follow him as he tries to unlearn everything he knew up until that point, while also following the people who are all somehow loosely connected to him. The reason I'm not rating this higher is because of the ending. I didn't necessarily dislike it, but  I had enough issues with it that it bumped down my rating. Firstly the writing somehow got worse during the climax of the book, the fight scenes were hard to follow and the characters got stupider as the author abandoned logic to finish the book how he wanted, unfortunately this was an occurrence I had issues with in the past while reading his work, so I really hope it doesn't appear in future instalments, because it breaks the immersion for me. The whole book was a bit slow paced and sped up too much during the end, I could hardly follow what was happening anymore. Despite this I really enjoyed the book overall and I'm exited to read the next book when it comes out.
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