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2-ish stars! This review will be spoiler-free!
Synopsis:
Britta Flannery is a huntress. She is the daughter of the most famous bounty hunter in the Kingdom of Malam who she inherited such skills from. Despite her father’s status, her mother’s lineage makes life difficult for Britta especially when her father is murdered. Caught poaching on the king’s land to survive the winter, she is offered a choice: to track down her father’s murderer or be given the noose. What shouldn’t seem like such a hard choice is made complicated by the fact that her father’s suspected murderer was his most loyal apprentice, and her closest childhood love, Cohen McKay. Britta will do whatever she can to bring her father’s murderer to justice, but she may realize that her father had left behind way more secrets than she could imagine.
Thoughts:
2-ish stars. I'm still not sure how much I disliked/liked this book.
I give you YA fantasy in it’s most basic, unoriginal form I have ever read. On the bright side the writing was not terrible. It flowed easily enough and had a steady pace (though it felt slow at times). To describe this book id probably use words like: predictable… predictable… where-is-the-world-building… and PREDICTABLE. I’ve finished this book and still do not know much about the world or magic system. I still don’t know why there’s a war brewing. Not to mention the utter flatness of the characters and unnecessarily angsty romance between them. Britta was super annoying and boring. She’s also one of the slowest antagonists I’ve ever encountered. Cohen was basically treated like a piece of meat, so muscular and so sniff-worthy. Even the ending couldn’t hook me really. I think I may read the second book simply to meet this new character that was introduced, then possibly end up DNF’ing this series if it doesn’t improve.
Plot: WARNING! If you liked this book, I sincerely apologize, but this was most definitely not my cup of tea.
Let’s talk about world building! Wait… What world building? Here’s what we know: there are two kingdoms, Malam and Shardania and they want to go to war with each other.
Here’s what we don’t know:
How these two kingdoms operate? What’s the government like?
How did these kingdoms come to be at odds?
What is the reason for this war specifically other than a disagreement on magic?
Oh there’s magic? How does this magic system work?
Who even are these rulers?
BASICALLY EVERYTHING ELSE.
And then there are a mass of characters that I had no feelings towards. No connection. Britta is undeniably boring. She may possibly be the slowest character I’ve ever met. Facts are literally thrown at her face, and she still can’t figure things out whether it’s regarding her abilities or her love interest. To top that off Cohen could possibly be the most flat love interest I’ve ever met. But at least he’s muscular and smells good ALL. THE. TIME. Add in some unnecessary angst, very over the top angst. These two would have been better off solving their relationship issues from the beginning rather than figuring it out so late in the end. That way they didn’t have to spend so much of the book focus on trying to figure out their relationship. I think the story would have been a lot less about the romance and more about the fantasy that way. I was actually confused if this was mistakenly supposed to be a romance with fantasy woven in versus a fantasy with romance woven in.
Then there’s the special snowflake syndrome. You thought the cheesy tropes were going to end? You thought wrong. I mean you know from the beginning that Britta definitely is going to have some sort of magical power. It’s just too obvious not to notice. Then she takes freakin’ forever to realize what she is despite the ridiculously obvious hints.
PREDICTABLE. PREDICTABLE. PREDICTABLE. I cannot emphasize how utterly predictable this book is. I think there were only two moments that I didn’t suspect to happen. One was because I honestly wasn’t looking for it because it had to do with the whole romance and why he left and such. The other was the ending because the magic system is highly unexplored so if I don’t understand the magic then I honestly can’t predict some of its consequences.
I was mostly unimpressed the entire book. I could not find a single aspect of this book that jumped out to me as original or unique. The only thing that makes me want to keep reading this series was the introduction of a new character at the end of the story that I’m just too curious about.
Characters:
I mean do I even need to go into the main characters. There's barely anything to say that I haven't already ranted about.
I liked Leaf. He seemed to be an interesting side character. I wonder if he was supposed to be another love interest. I wonder if the “new character” at the end is supposed to be another love interest too. Either might be better than Cohen.
Thomas pissed me off immensely.
Inette I also liked for her personality.
I have so many unanswered questions about the other characters still.
Overall:
Would you want to continue if you didn't like this series? If there anything that has caught your eye in this initial novel? I just want to get to know this "new character." This new person she is connected to.