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citrus_seasalt 's review for:
Death's Country
by R.M. Romero
Hm… I was disappointed by this novel after anticipating it the moment I finished “A Warning About Swans”, but I enjoyed it slightly more than I thought I would based on the first half. I tried suspending my disbelief for the in-verse aspect, since I’m used to reading YA in the genre and know that of course some of the dialogue is going to be more flowery or obvious to get the story across, but I just couldn’t get invested in the characters. The writing tries to be as lush for the characters as it is for the darkly magical, neon-colored underworld, but instead it feels like it is too focused on aesthetics and seeming profound to have any kind of substance.
In a Eurydices and Orpheus retelling, one of the biggest issues that you can have is failing to create a convincing (or memorable) romance. Unfortunately, that was the case in “Death’s Country”, and it was what plummeted my rating the moment I reached the initial beach meet-cute. Incorporating the mermaid and prince motif/metaphor in their dialogue was also a strange creative choice, this was when the three of them were still in a contemporary setting, so it just felt cringy. (None of the actions and dialogue felt realistic either, lmfao?? I had to shut my book for a moment.) And while I appreciate that Liora’s arc was meant to critique the MPDG undertones of her character, she spent so much time being a plot device that there wasn’t enough depth to counteract that.
(Also. What is it with my 3 star YA reads overusing lyrics from “Space Oddity” by David Bowie??)
I will say, though, that I liked the Underworld itself (in all its strangely Wonderland-esque glory), the character of Virgil (although he didn’t have a lot of on-page time), the very beginning (I was SO prepared for this to give me Anna-Marie McLemore vibes!! Ugh!), and the final twist of what Andres’s offering to Death was.
I’m used to Romero having on-the-nose writing, but this didn’t have the same emotional pull and depth, in my opinion. Perhaps this comes from there being so much subject matter that isn’t given a lot of time to be handled.
In a Eurydices and Orpheus retelling, one of the biggest issues that you can have is failing to create a convincing (or memorable) romance. Unfortunately, that was the case in “Death’s Country”, and it was what plummeted my rating the moment I reached the initial beach meet-cute. Incorporating the mermaid and prince motif/metaphor in their dialogue was also a strange creative choice, this was when the three of them were still in a contemporary setting, so it just felt cringy. (None of the actions and dialogue felt realistic either, lmfao?? I had to shut my book for a moment.) And while I appreciate that Liora’s arc was meant to critique the MPDG undertones of her character, she spent so much time being a plot device that there wasn’t enough depth to counteract that.
(Also. What is it with my 3 star YA reads overusing lyrics from “Space Oddity” by David Bowie??)
I will say, though, that I liked the Underworld itself (in all its strangely Wonderland-esque glory), the character of Virgil (although he didn’t have a lot of on-page time), the very beginning (I was SO prepared for this to give me Anna-Marie McLemore vibes!! Ugh!), and the final twist of what Andres’s offering to Death was.
I’m used to Romero having on-the-nose writing, but this didn’t have the same emotional pull and depth, in my opinion. Perhaps this comes from there being so much subject matter that isn’t given a lot of time to be handled.