Tag Archives: young adult

Book Review: Shattered Kingdom, by Angelina J. Steffort

I think I won this copy of Angelina J. Steffort‘s Shattered Kingdom. I do not recall where from; however. Unfortunately, this is a book I found on my shelf that I had forgotten about. It’s a new year, and I’m setting a goal to be better about reading my physical books, and this is a perfect example of why.

Sworn to a goddess. One with her blade. A heart yet unbroken.

It would have been only one more year of training. One year in the dust and wind of the Calma Desert. But Gandrett Brayton’s fate storms in disguised as a beautiful stranger with a damning secret.

As he forces her into the service of the lord who tore her from her mother’s arms ten years ago to commit her to the Order of Vala, Gandrett is left with a choice: run, or work for the man she despises and earn the chance to see her family again.

Trained with all the weapons she can wield with her hands, Gandrett must learn that at the courts of the shattered kingdom of Sives, her sword won’t help her– especially when it is her own heart on the line.

This was fine, if overly long and, consequently, feels slow. I liked the characters, and the world seems interesting. However, it’s very, very focused on the I’m not like other girls heroine who embodies just about ALL the cliched YA heroine tropes. She’s not clumsy in a trip-over-her-own-feet way (though she is socially graceless, which might check the same box). But just about every other cliche is there. Which means nothing here feels very original.

I got annoyed with four main issues, though. These aren’t necessarily problems, just things that annoyed me. First, for being such a fantastic fighter, she does amazingly little fighting and loses every time. Second, she grew up in an isolated group, learning to fight. The effects of that should have been visually and linguistically apparent, not just in scars. This book takes no account of accents and the physical effects of a brutal lifestyle when it decides a warrior from a remote outpost is the ideal person to disguise as a lady. Third, I was annoyed that every boy/man she encountered fell for her hard and fast, and she didn’t notice. (Yep, it’s a YA trope, but it annoyed me.) And last, Nehelon’s obsession/love gave me the ick. It wasn’t the hundreds-of-years age gap. That’s pretty common in fantasy romance. It was the way she was underage, and he started obsessing over her from afar without her knowing or doing/participating in anything to provoke or encourage it. The reader is given no real reason for it. Like, there is no point when we saw him start to fall in love with her or to appreciate anything about her as a person. It felt very old-man-lusts-after-young-girl, very pervy uncle who’s just waiting for her to be legal. This is a longish series, and I think probably nothing will happen until she is older. But it still felt icky to me here.

All in all, despite my annoyances, the book kept me entertained for the time I spent with it. If I came across the rest of the series at the library, I’d likely read it. I don’t think I’d buy it, though.

Other Reviews:

Shattered Kingdom, by Angelina J. Steffort [review] — a massively UNDERRATED fantasy romance

Audio Book Review: Magical Intelligence, M.K. Wiseman

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Somewhere on the internet, I came across a freebie Audible code for M.K. Wiseman‘s Magical Intelligence.

When you are a member of Britain’s first team of wizard spies, every mission might be your last. But as the dawning of the 20th century draws ever nearer, magic grows weak. Violectric Dampening, the clash of man-made electricity with the Gifts of magekind, threatens M.I.’s existence. And if that isn’t enough, they’ve now been discharged from their own government. Obsolete. Distrusted.

And now hunted by one of their own.

Myra Wetherby has always feared her so-called fits, strange visions of people and places that she cannot explain. It is the emotional manipulation, however, a strange empathic connection to those around her, which threatens her very sanity. A danger to her family, Myra runs away, falling straight into the hands of the newly ousted Magical Intelligence team. Who just so happen to need an ability like hers.

Which makes Myra one of them…whether she likes it or not.

The description for this book isn’t untrue, but it misdirects. It does not give an accurate impression of the story. Most of it is the history that the story builds on, rather than the story itself, and it more problematically leaves out the fact that the main character, Myra, is 14 years old, which makes this a much different story than one is led to expect by the blurb.

Having said that, nothing about the story actually feels like she is 14 years old. I say that as a parent of a 14-year-old. So, I feel ideally placed to say her young age does not work for the character or the plotline. She does not act 14, no one treats her as if she is 14, and the plot does not lend itself to a 14-year-old. Honestly, several of the other characters are also in their teens, and they don’t act their age either. But it is especially problematic for Myra, as the main character. Plus,14 feels so much younger than 18 in this context. Eighteen might round up to a young adult. 14 rounds down to a child.

Outside that one big glaring problem, I generally liked this. I didn’t love it, but I liked it well enough. However, the pacing is a bit off. Somehow, the beginning dragged on and on, and then the end rushed too fast. Honestly, I felt like I was constantly scrambling, being like, “Wait, who is this again?”

I do feel like this book did a lot of work setting up the series. So, the rest of the series might not suffer from the same pacing problems, which could just be a symptom of first-book syndrome. All in all, it was a middle-of-the-road read for me. Alyson Grauer did a nice job with the narration, however.

Other Reviews:

Blog Tour Book Review: Magical Intelligence – M. K. Wiseman

Book Review: Wake and Fade, by Lisa McMann

Wake:

This was a seriously quick read. I started it after dinner, and by the time I went to bed around 11, I’d finished it and about a 1/3 of Fade (book 2). And to my complete surprise (because I’m sometimes iffy about YA), after a somewhat slow start, I enjoyed it. I liked the almost diary-like setup (part of why it reads so fast) and the main characters. I found the side characters to be pretty clichéd and unexciting. However, the book primarily focuses on the main character, who is a practical sort of girl in a tough situation, and her male counterpart, who is particularly endearing in his caregiving.

Fade:

I thought this was a finely written book, but I didn’t like it anywhere near as much as book one. I suffer from pretty severe rape-fatigue when it comes to rape in the books I read for entertainment and…yeah, I could go the rest of my life without reading one more book centered on men taking advantage of girls. So, the plot was a flop for me. But I can still acknowledge that I like the character and her love interest and appreciate McMann’s YA writing. There, technically, is a 3rd book in the series (and the library probably has it). But I feel like this book stopped at a good place for a break.