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rubeusbeaky 's review for:
Our Dark Duet
by V.E. Schwab
This sequel didn't quite live up to my love for the first half of the duology. The first 150 pages with the hackers in the more modern/less deteriorated city was realistic, but also frustrating, disheartening, and boring. Instead of being drawn to a diverse, ragtag crew, I was just angry at their privilege. Cute, they get to live away from the war, in their safe little apartments. Meanwhile, in another city, people are being systematically slaughtered. Maybe that's the point, maybe it's supposed to be Too Real, maybe I'm supposed to be upset. But it's an annoying intro to your book to give me half a dozen characters I just do not care about.
Same with the sections from Sloan's PoV. I felt he interrupted the DUET of this duology. This is supposed to be Kate and August's story, and they made great everymen for dissecting complex themes and feelings. But Sloan is a campy, cartoon villain. People are juice boxes, he has ennui having successfully conquered his little corner of the world, but eurgh he's surrounded by morons, how taxing!! *Eye roll*.
Alice isn't much better, with her Harley Quinn-esque moments of mayhem, without making a direct attack on August. It would have been more satisfying if Alice (Kate's doppelganger) and the unknown shooter (August's doppleganger) had been added to the story as dark mirrors of their twins, to further explore the grey area of what makes a man different from a monster.
The book still had some amazing themes. Violence changes people, makes them compromise parts of themselves to survive or rationalize traumas endured. Survivors can suffer from PTSD or depression, which can cause irritability, irrationality, disorientation, self-isolation, and even lead people to commit acts of self-harm or violence. Violence then becomes a cycle, a cycle brilliantly personified with the void monster. But the monster's fractured, stream of consciousness poems were such a different format from the first book, that it felt like I was reading a completely different series. I found myself skimming the poems instead of appreciating them, they mostly said the same things over and over. Villainizing depression IS a cool concept, but the format shift wasn't quite right; I was reminded of all my own emo high school writing
Same with the sections from Sloan's PoV. I felt he interrupted the DUET of this duology. This is supposed to be Kate and August's story, and they made great everymen for dissecting complex themes and feelings. But Sloan is a campy, cartoon villain. People are juice boxes, he has ennui having successfully conquered his little corner of the world, but eurgh he's surrounded by morons, how taxing!! *Eye roll*.
Alice isn't much better, with her Harley Quinn-esque moments of mayhem, without making a direct attack on August. It would have been more satisfying if Alice (Kate's doppelganger) and the unknown shooter (August's doppleganger) had been added to the story as dark mirrors of their twins, to further explore the grey area of what makes a man different from a monster.
The book still had some amazing themes. Violence changes people, makes them compromise parts of themselves to survive or rationalize traumas endured. Survivors can suffer from PTSD or depression, which can cause irritability, irrationality, disorientation, self-isolation, and even lead people to commit acts of self-harm or violence. Violence then becomes a cycle, a cycle brilliantly personified with the void monster. But the monster's fractured, stream of consciousness poems were such a different format from the first book, that it felt like I was reading a completely different series. I found myself skimming the poems instead of appreciating them, they mostly said the same things over and over. Villainizing depression IS a cool concept, but the format shift wasn't quite right; I was reminded of all my own emo high school writing