annasbookjournal's reviews
113 reviews

Reign Of Spears, The Chronicles of Toxandria 3 by Martin Dukes, Martin Dukes

adventurous dark funny mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This is my first ARC ever, and I feel extremely blessed to have been given this opportunity. I want to thank Martin Dukes for very very kindly sending me the ARC of this book, which comes out on the 31st of July!

I found a lot of things in this book that I absolutely loved. First of all, the writing.

The idea of the aristocratic setting is supported very strongly by the choice of vocabulary. The writing itself flows magnificently, and the sentences don’t feel mechanically constructed like they do in some other books. Not to mention the humour! It made me laugh out loud multiple times.

Another thing that I really appreciated was reading the romantic part of the book from the perspective of the male character, rather than the usual female character. It was a pov that I don’t usually find and I found myself enjoying this novelty.

I wish this book could be turned into a movie, I would love it!

Content Warnings

Ariadne by Jennifer Saint

Go to review page

slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

1.0

A bit of a harsh review, but here goes.

As soon as I finished this book, I wanted to have nothing to do with it anymore and it took me a bit to write a review about it.

The writing and the choices in the depiction of Ariadne were really disappointing for me. In an interview, Jennifer Saint talks about how passionate and angry Ariadne was in a source that Saint read, and how powerful her voice was, but I don’t see that at all in this book. I feel like many of the deep emotions that Ariadne would have felt were breezed over in a page and never talked about.

Like when Phaedra committed suicide, Ariadne’s grief is never ever talked about: she literally just goes back to how her life was and even says that it was EASY to do so. That is not the sisterly love that I would like to read in a feminist book.

The way that Ariadne was depicted in the beginning of the book in particular made me question if this was the best way to retell the myth: her character is described as a horny girl who just wants to do first Theseus and then Dionysus. I feel like there was no depth to her whatsoever and that’s really disappointing. The point of a retelling (especially from a feminist POV) is to show that the women were more than pawns, that they had emotions of their own and that they weren’t stupid like the ancient people thought. We, on the other side, are handed a horny girl who can’t even come up with a plan on her own and has to depend on Theseus and Daedalus. WTF.

I believe that the only good points from this book are the descriptions of the hard moments of pregnancy that Phaedra goes through.

I also found myself countless times feeling like the choice of vocabulary was very modern, even though the setting for the scenes were ancient royal Greeks.

I don’t think I’m going to read any of Saint’s other mythological retellings after this.

Content Warnings