elzbethmrgn's Reviews (667)

Read this for Sword and Laser. I liked Briar, she kicks ass and takes names because she has to, because she's been dealing with shit for a long time.

But steampunk leaves me underwhelmed, and I'm not a fan of zombies. So there's that. The story was good, the characters were excellent, the genre isn't one I'd pick up outside of a book club. But if steampunk and zombies are your thing, you'd probably like this one.

I'm not an Emelan fan, I like Tortall a lot better. In saying that, my favourite characters in Emelan are Rosethorn and Briar both of whom are main characters here, along with Evvy (who Briar picked up in Street Magic). This is essentially the backstory to Briar's behaviour in The Will of the Empress, and we learn how Evvy met Luvo (who was a major character in Melting Stones, although Battle Magic is a far more interesting read than either of those two stories.

The POV switches a lot, which I guess is fashionable in fantasy these days and is necessary for some parts of the storytelling, but it is jarring when it happens multiple times in a chapter. It also loses some dramatic tension when one of the characters is thought to be dead, but the reader knows they are not because of the POV switching. The reunion of the characters with the person they thought had died loses much of the feels it could have had.

I wanted to give this an 'It was ok' star rating, but I think it deserves more than two. Overall, it is still Tamora Pierce and her fantastic style. I don't want to make it sound awful but I'm not a fan of the setting and I didn't really care about the war these people were fighting in. Like the rest of Emelan it won't be in my re-read pile, but if you're an Emelan fan you'll probably enjoy this one a lot more than the last one.

While it often seemed the author had a checklist of fantasy genre cliches and made sure she ticked them all off over the course of the story.

Girl has mysterious powers she didn't know she had! Girl gets a wise older man with shady past for a mentor! Girl has unexpected first period! Her parents were killed by the bad guy! etc.

I didn't see the point in being reminded three times that Maerad was a girl and had to bleed every month. If it was a not-a-girl-not-yet-a-woman thing, we got that with the first mention. If it was a passage of time thing, surely there are other ways to do it? I don't object to periods (well, I do, but that's because I'm a girl too), but it seemed more than a little weird.

But I am trying to like books despite their flaws, instead of dismissing them because of their flaws, and I will be reading the second in this series. I do appreciate a strong female character and this book has one, and overall the series has potential.

Crying all the tears.

I think this book could have used some more input from an editor, there were definitely some scenes that could have been cleaned up, for example towards the end of the book the need for characters to internally debate a point for 3 or 4 pages, and then have other characters bring up the same point 3 or 4 times got tedious. We know Richard won't marry Bess, why labour the same point with the same argument in 4 different instances within such a short amount of pages? At least the other repetitions - Elizabeth Woodville's cunningness, Edward's getting fat and unhealthy, the Princes in the Tower - were all spread out a bit.

Some of the anachronisms in descriptions annoyed me (one character thinking about something as 'newfangled', one description of 'static electricity' etc).

But, minor criticisms. Overall it didn't suck (because I finished it), but I don't think I would read again.

I don't think I've ever met a 4 year old who would sit still in her corner and play with her dolls all day, for days on end.