whatthedeuce's Reviews (1.39k)

This book needed a better editor. It completely lost the plot on scoring after a few chapters, and the writing was so repetitive. I honestly don’t know what even compelled me to keep reading as I was quite bored with the meandering explanations about Comaneci’s first perfect score and how scoring evolved. Each chapter felt like a long ramble down a tangential rabbit hole.

Some of the time jumps felt weirdly paced, and every now and then, the dialogue was oddly worded almost as if the characters were speaking in modern parlance. That really threw me off at times. Shadow of Perseus was a much better novel so I’m glad I read that one first or I likely wouldn’t have based off my mixed feelings about this book.

The dialogue was so clunky and juvenile, and I couldn’t stand all the smut scenes between Atlas and Lor. Those scenes bored me to death and just dragged out a poorly written story. And don’t even get me started on the trials themselves, all of which were laughably dumb and none of which were remotely interesting despite lives hanging in the balance in each one. It’s also such a strange choice for the lead female character’s chapters to be written in first person POV while the male lead’s is in third person omniscient. I can’t understand how a book that started out so compelling when Lor was in Nostraza ended up being so trite and repetitive the second she left the prison walls. If I had to read about her holding in her tears one more goddamn time, I would’ve thrown the book away. The only reason I didn’t is because it was a library book. And last but not least, Lor goes from “What could they want with me? Why pluck me from Nostraza?” to “I’m hiding a huge (glaringly obvious) secret that got me locked up and is why they want me in the trials” right before the book ends. Like was she supposed to be an unreliable narrator?! Did she have fucking amnesia the whole book?! Editing was so badly needed for 90% of this trash ass novel.