Things I Liked:
The ending was my favorite part of the whole book. I thought the intrigue and conspiracy at court was interesting (at least near the end). Aurelia was a fun character, headstrong and usually smart, but flawed. I liked the romance between Aurelia and Robert, though it didn't seem fully developed. I thought Osterlund raised some interesting issues for her main character to deal with in her position as future queen. However, I think the book would have been improved with some more development in everything - setting, plot, characters. As a side note, I was impressed, with all the whitewashing cover controversies, that this cover conveys the darker skinned Aurelia correctly.
Things I Didn't Like:
Most of the book I thought was a little bit boring. I was not very interested in the characters and story until near the end. It seemed predictable and dull, at least until the end when there were some surprises. But, I thought it was not quite enough to save the reading experience for me. A little too simplistic and some of the good issues Osterlund raised were not answered sufficiently for me, such as how Aurelia would deal with the discontented peasants. A good first book, and I'm hopeful Osterlund will have an even better second one.
Read-alikes:
Crown Duel and Court Duel by Sherwood Smith
Legacy by Cayla Kluver
BOOK CONTENT RATINGS:
s-factor: none
mrg-factor: none
v-factor: ->
a few minor incidents
Overall rating: ***
If you buy through my Amazon linkage, I will get a very small percentage
Posts
I had higher hopes for this one as well. I wanted to like it much more than I actually did, but I am still looking forward to reading the sequel, Exile, when it comes out next year. I did appreciate that this was a quick read (at least for me) and that Aurelia's character was pretty much developed within the first chapter. I suppose I could have known more about the others, but I didn't care so much about them anyway. :) I really loved Academy 7 by Osterlund, but again, it's a quick read with not an excessive amount of character/setting/plot development (and I say excessive because personally, I think many YA novels over 300 pages can get excessive in their descriptions!).
ReplyDeleteNatalie, I haven't heard of Academy 7. I'll have to check it out. Sometimes it is nice to have a quick read (especially if it's due at the library soon :) And I completely agree that some YA over 300 pages have too much.
ReplyDeleteThe ending irritated the living daylights out of me! I found it really unsatisfying. I'm excited there's a sequel coming out- maybe it will end better for me.
ReplyDeleteOoh, I should pick up the sequel too!
ReplyDelete