alouette's Reviews (258)

short review: relatable but i thought it dragged a lot, so i ended up DNFing
basically “just because i can see myself in so many parts of this book doesn’t mean it’s exciting”

this was so cute, it made me incredibly happy :) I had some trouble trying to keep track of the passage of time at the start, but it got smoother along the way and by the end I couldn’t keep the grin off my face. plot and tension was good- but of course it was the characters and their dynamics that stole the show!

very important book - while the flow was choppy at times that obviously doesn’t take away from my admiration for the research that must’ve gone into this book and the impact it had on me as i read it.

Was hard to follow if you hadn’t read the book (which I have, but not in awhile) but the art was fantastic and the core messages+plot was still there.

3.5 stars- —-> 2.5 stars after edit

*imported from goodreads, contains spoilers*

It’s hard for me to articulate my thoughts on this one, but essentially I thought the plot weak and had little emotional attatchment in it (Johanna’s big thing that she must sacrifice the map for is... her dog? I understand that she is soft compared to Felicity but the bond between her and her dog is not something that’s developed... it’s there for a few pages then we move onto the real adventure. Whereas in the last book if there had been a time where Monty was being blackmailed because it was, say, Felicity being threatened, then it pulls at the heartstrings more).

Anyways, there was also the pacing- the book took so long to start on the main adventure, and the action was separated by stretches of travelling that was described in a few paragraphs, rendering me confused and bored. It was also separated by Felcity’s frequent “inner empowerment monologues” which, don’t get me wrong, are a great message, but it felt like the author only wrote those parts to remind themself what Felicity’s character was to be like. And, the way Felicity had grown by the end didn’t sit right with me, nor did the way she decided to go with Sim for a year or to write a letter to Callum of all people.

This all led to a rather anticlimactic ending- I felt no tension by the end of the book, because this clearly wasn’t the type of book where their ship was going to sink, obviously they would win somehow. And when a dragon (again, no emotional attachment, just “okay cool a dragon it’s not even anything to do with that baby dragon it’s just... some random dragon”) was the one who saved them all and killed hundreds of people... that was that. Done. At this point I was just reading because I hate DNFing.

The things I did like included Johanna- despite my criticism of her dog dilemma, she was genuinely a good character and more interesting to me than Felicity. Sim was cool as well, with her inner conflict at the end of siding with the girls or staying loyal to her dad being perhaps the most interesting part of that third act. And the amount of research that went into this book was fabulous. So while I think I preferred the first book a lot more, shoutout to Ms. Lee for writing this, because it was clearly written with love for the subject matter.

(Edit: Also the fact that the two white women think they have the right to study the dragons in the name of “research” and “its potential is being wasted”, the fact they want to disturb the peace that the POC pirates have with the dragons gives off a stench... to me it’s reminiscent of the colonization of Canada and the way settlers destroyed the peace Aboriginal peoples had with nature... that may be a bit of a reach but still, Johanna and Felicity’s motivations there are scary when you give it some thought. I get that it was a thing of the time period but Felicity is supposed to be a progressive character, and it’s not written to be intentional sooooo.... it stinks.)

2.25 stars

enough intrigue to keep me reading until the end, but it almost felt like there were *too many* red herrings. i think that when a mystery has to be explained so much that the entire last chapter reads like one big expository essay, it maybe isn’t a good mystery. one could read the last two chapters and bam, they know everything that’s happened- everything else, including the bland characters and the aforementioned red herrings, doesn’t matter. i found no enjoyment or surprise when the culprit was revealed, which is unfortunate, because i thought this story so reminiscent of And Then There Were None had lots of potential.