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A review by yvkhan
Burning Glass by Kathryn Purdie
2.0
As many people have said, a lot of this was pretty meh. It’s only saving grace (?) was the love triangle, if we’re being honest here.
One of my main problems was that Sonya just can’t control her emotions? She denounces the king in front of everyone. She’s too busy getting seduced to do her job. She acts out constantly at the banquet(?) just because everyone around her was really drunk and made her feel really high.
Another problem is how some things have really little build-up? Like, ok, so the dude whose name starts with ‘T’ exists (Tosya?), but why should we care about him? We only know that 1) he’s kind and that 2) everything about him is long, which seems slightly innuendo-ish. For the last scene where Yuri is revealed to have killed the dowager - why should we care about him? We might care about Pia but Yuri isn’t someone we know at all. The revelation has little strength in that way.
I can’t remember them exactly, but there are quite a few other instances where Sonia seems to have thought of something without us following her train of thought or where some other development in emotion or thought has occured that we are unaware of. It feels as if the writer had many specific beats in her mind which she wanted to get to, but could not link together.
This is most obvious to me when Sonia expresses her political opinions. She’s spent so long dwelling in romance during the meetings that we don’t see how she has been paying attention to the important issues at hand. How does she know anything about Shengli? How did we not know of her opinions during the meetings? Did she never think of them? Isn’t she the POV character?
There are also a few other things that struck me as odd (logically speaking). If the Auraseers are meant to be bodyguards, why don’t they learn any self defence? If Tosya’s book is so well known, why didn’t Sonia ever know about it? If manipulating Valko’s emotions is so important, why doesn’t Sonia ever practice?
I also wished that someone would ask the question of why Sonia is so skilled at Auraseeing.
And yeah, that’s about it.
One of my main problems was that Sonya just can’t control her emotions? She denounces the king in front of everyone. She’s too busy getting seduced to do her job. She acts out constantly at the banquet(?) just because everyone around her was really drunk and made her feel really high.
Another problem is how some things have really little build-up? Like, ok, so the dude whose name starts with ‘T’ exists (Tosya?), but why should we care about him? We only know that 1) he’s kind and that 2) everything about him is long, which seems slightly innuendo-ish. For the last scene where Yuri is revealed to have killed the dowager - why should we care about him? We might care about Pia but Yuri isn’t someone we know at all. The revelation has little strength in that way.
I can’t remember them exactly, but there are quite a few other instances where Sonia seems to have thought of something without us following her train of thought or where some other development in emotion or thought has occured that we are unaware of. It feels as if the writer had many specific beats in her mind which she wanted to get to, but could not link together.
This is most obvious to me when Sonia expresses her political opinions. She’s spent so long dwelling in romance during the meetings that we don’t see how she has been paying attention to the important issues at hand. How does she know anything about Shengli? How did we not know of her opinions during the meetings? Did she never think of them? Isn’t she the POV character?
There are also a few other things that struck me as odd (logically speaking). If the Auraseers are meant to be bodyguards, why don’t they learn any self defence? If Tosya’s book is so well known, why didn’t Sonia ever know about it? If manipulating Valko’s emotions is so important, why doesn’t Sonia ever practice?
I also wished that someone would ask the question of why Sonia is so skilled at Auraseeing.
And yeah, that’s about it.