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1 star, this review will be spoiler free!
Synopsis:
In a kingdom in Scotland there lies a dying king with a peculiar ring on his finger from a peculiar place no one can recall. They know this ring is the cause of his impending death, but the ring cannot be removed. On a magical horse and with a magical glow, a boy, about the age of the prince protecting his king, comes in with a plan to cure the king of his ailment. This wondrous and fey-like boy appears to save the king, but something is amiss. It's up to this fey-boy and the prince, brothers long separated form each other, to save the kingdom from enemies both foreign and within.
Initial thoughts: *I requested this DRC for review on Netgalley.*
So this book has VERY mixed reviews. I, on the unfortunate hand, did not enjoy this book. I don't doubt that this book will have it's appeals too other people, it just wasn't my cup of tea. I didn't enjoy the writing because it felt too awkward and repetitive to me. The plot took too long for me to understand what the point of the story was. And the magic, or more appropriately, lack of magic and lack of fey disappointed me. Altogether, very sad to say I didn't enjoy this one.
Plot:
The writing in this story took me by surprise. Generally when reading YA stories that take place in this time period, I’ve only experienced that the dialogue uses old language, but a majority of the rest of the writing is fairly modern still. This book however utilized old language throughout the entire book. This could just be me, because many seem to enjoy the writing in this book, but I found it often times difficult to get through. There were many times where I had to reread lines and passages to really understand what the author was trying to tell me. All in all, I felt like the writing was awkward read and repetitive. Repetitive because the author had a tendency to use the same words over and over to describe different things. For example) the word uncanny at first was used in a way I don’t see it generally used, so it stood out to me. Then I continued to see this word pop up a lot through the rest of the book.
The bromance was borderline lovers instead of brothers. At times, their brotherly love went a bit overboard, but nothing seemed to be truly incestual. Still, sometimes I had to remember that they were brothers and not romantically involved with one another. What really sucks though is how suddenly their brotherly relationship came to be. Literally Aric and Albaric meet and on the SAME day, maybe only a few hours later, they are already willing to die for one another (before Aric even finds out that Albaric is his brother). That did not make any sense to me, even if Aric can telepathically understand how Albaric feels. Which, by the way, was never truly explained, it was just… there. Not to mention, their relationship gets even weirder in the end.
The storyline was not gripping enough for me. Going back through my Goodreads updates, you can see that the entire time I was CONFUSED. I could not for the life of me figure out what the point of the story was. I felt like the entire time I was just reading about Aric’s life and how there’s a growing strain on his relationship with his father because of Albaric. The events that kept taking places all felt discombobulated or random. The one consistent problem was that King Bardaric did not love Albaric and appeared to be turning into a dark cruel man. The mention of the real conflict did not come until the very end and even then, didn’t mesh well with the rest of the plot.
The ending was odd. First of all we have this romance that really really made me uncomfortable. The love interest is brought to the castle under the pretense that she’s “too young” for Aric and that she not “womanly enough” yet for him to really like her in a romantic way. And yet… he falls in love, almost instantly, in the short time she’s there. Secondly, there’s an introduction of a new character that both felt random and causes yet more strain on the royal family. Then the “resolution” that the author chose to go with was just plain WEIRD. And everybody just accepted it. And things kind of just went from completely bad, to all better in 1 page. Abruptly, if you will, like a majority of things in this book.
Other things I did not like include the extreme lack of magic or magical elements except when it was convenient right in the end. I did not like how magic in this world and the ring remain completely unexplained and yet something magical was used to resolve the whole family feud and final conflict. Then there’s the fact that this story is being sold of the basis of “a tale of brothers whose love and loyalty to each other is such that it defies impending warfare, sundering seas, fated hatred, and the very course of time itself.” But I wasn’t delivered any scenes of war. There was only 1 short moment of being in the sea and it wasn’t particularly sundering. And there’s no mention of time being a player in this plot except for the fact that Albaric doesn’t understand what it is. Then there are the character names… C’mon… Aric, Albaric, Bardaric… I’ve got nothing else to say about that.
Characters:
I have no emotional attachment to any of these characters. Didn’t love em, didn’t hate em. Guess I’m glad Aric at least has somewhat of a character arc. That’s really all I have to say.
Overall:
Being completely honest, it’s not that I can’t see the appeal of this book. I can completely understand why some people love this book. It just really was not my cup of tea.