3.5 stars; not good enough to bump the rating up to 4.
I thought Hans McAlister was a fairly interesting character and enjoyed reading about him, espe3.5 stars; not good enough to bump the rating up to 4.
I thought Hans McAlister was a fairly interesting character and enjoyed reading about him, especially his relationships with the street gangs of his city. Didn't particularly care for the twist at the end involving him though.
Overall I kinda liked the setting but I kinda felt like the fact that most of the backstory took place 1000 years ago was kinda unbelievable given that the political structures of the kingdom had basically remained static that entire time.
Like if you read a book about medieval England, you see that various dynasties rise and fall every century or so; no one family remains in power for an entire millennium, and no treaty holds for an entire millennium. It was kinda jarring to see the *same* family ruled the country the entire time, and that for the past 1000 years, there *always* was a Byrne as Captain of the Guard, and that the Bayar family had been a powerful wizarding family the *entire time*.
I guess I'm just saying that if that backstory had taken place like 100 years ago instead of 1000, I would have found it more believable.
Also the princess was kinda annoying. Like she's an embodiment of that trope where the princess is not directly in contact with the poor citizens of her country and once she learns of their dire straights she does everything she can to help them. I think that character trait is supposed to show that even though she's flirty and vain and overly-concerned with boys and clothes, she's still a good, compassionate person who wants to do the best for the kingdom.
So my problem with this trope is embodied by the following scene: The princess decides she wants to visit the town incognito, and to buy some time alone she tells her nurse she wants to eat supper privately in her rooms. She goes out incognito as a maid and along the way runs into the cook who tells her that the spoiled princess is making her do more work; the cook has to make up a seperate dinner for the picky-eater princess and get someone to bring it up to her instead of just giving her food in the dining room.
The princess just goes on her merry way without even eating the dinner that was made specially for her. Like this could be a real character-growth moment, where she realizes she's selfish and that she's causing more work for the serving staff, but that goes completely over her head. If she actually cared about helping the poor denizens of her kingdom I feel like she'd have learned from this scene. That's why I feel like 'being kind' is really just meant to make her more likeable to the reader, and it isn't actually an integral part of her personality. ...more
Fairly typical YA fare. I read like 80 pages and got bored and then just flipped to the last 20 pages to see how it ended. The motivations of the mainFairly typical YA fare. I read like 80 pages and got bored and then just flipped to the last 20 pages to see how it ended. The motivations of the main characters weren't clear to me; they largely felt like cardboard caricatures. About ten pages after the main female character and the main male character met, I could tell that the author was setting up a bad YA romance plot between the two of them.
Mikey's a pretty typical high school kid. He wants to figure out how pass his Calc class, figure out if his crush on his bI kinda liked it. Cute book.
Mikey's a pretty typical high school kid. He wants to figure out how pass his Calc class, figure out if his crush on his best friend actually means anything, and figure out how to deal with his overbearing mom. He's an ordinary kid, just trying to deal with high school even as the Immortals are trying to take over the world. He isn't an indie kid, so it isn't his destiny to save the world from the Immortals. He's just trying to live his life.
It's basically like reading about the kids who attended Buffy's high school, and had to wonder what on earth she was up to, and why danger always seems to follow her, without being directly involved. ...more
I liked Finnikin, thought he was interesting. The twist was pretty obvious from like page 12 or so. Thought the rape scene was superfluous and waMeh.
I liked Finnikin, thought he was interesting. The twist was pretty obvious from like page 12 or so. Thought the rape scene was superfluous and was basically used as a plot device.
I think she thought that adding more details would make help readers envision her world, but the details she added were unrealistic, and threw me for a loop each time they were mentioned.
(Like the whole country only has 6,000 people? But there's five distinct ethnic groups?)
And the thing that annoyed me the most was that (view spoiler)[ Finnikin didn't recognize Isaboe??? When he was demonstrated to have recognized many other fellow countrymen from 10 years before??? Like the entire plot depends on him not recognizing her, which is really, really stupid given that they were raised as children together (hide spoiler)]...more
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