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ninetalevixen 's review for:
Legendary
by Stephanie Garber
1. [b:Caraval|27883214|Caraval (Caraval, #1)|Stephanie Garber|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1465563623s/27883214.jpg|45697227] | ★★★ 1/2
2019: Doing a back-to-back reread in preparation to read Finale and honestly I’m pretty disappointed. These books have so much potential, but they’ve been falling flat: the characters hard to sympathize with, the magical setting underdeveloped, the writing overly lush.
———
To be fair it has been quite a while since I read the first Caraval book, but this one seems to stand on its own pretty well. (It kind of reminds me of how ASOUE is pretty serialized until you get to The Ersatz Elevator, then the plot continues between books. In other words, the first book is kind of prologue-y and now the “real” action is happening.)
There was a lot more emphasis on plot than setting, somewhat alleviating the over-writing that bugged me in the first book; Tella seemed to have much more agency and knowledge in making her decisions — a good sense of what was going on, though she knew she didn’t have the whole picture.
Not a fan of love triangles, so the ending was particularly frustrating. But romance(s) aside, the story was pretty compelling and I definitely want to see how it all plays out.
2019: Doing a back-to-back reread in preparation to read Finale and honestly I’m pretty disappointed. These books have so much potential, but they’ve been falling flat: the characters hard to sympathize with, the magical setting underdeveloped, the writing overly lush.
———
To be fair it has been quite a while since I read the first Caraval book, but this one seems to stand on its own pretty well. (It kind of reminds me of how ASOUE is pretty serialized until you get to The Ersatz Elevator, then the plot continues between books. In other words, the first book is kind of prologue-y and now the “real” action is happening.)
There was a lot more emphasis on plot than setting, somewhat alleviating the over-writing that bugged me in the first book; Tella seemed to have much more agency and knowledge in making her decisions — a good sense of what was going on, though she knew she didn’t have the whole picture.
Not a fan of love triangles, so the ending was particularly frustrating. But romance(s) aside, the story was pretty compelling and I definitely want to see how it all plays out.