Believable characters, overall captivating story.

I really enjoyed the flawed, believable characters of this book, as well as the interactions and emotional outbursts, that for once, were probable, given the character's backstory. No insufferable perfection, no easy, direct storylines, that we often see in stories of western culture heroins (with few bright exceptions). A few things could have been better explained (a sterilization/womb destruction seems to be on trend, without ever tackling the consequences of such procedures. maybe a menopausal heroin isn't as attractive?) Overall, i enjoyed the book and gladly bought the second part. Emily Zeller's performance is also very enjoyable.

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1 Person fand das hilfreich

Finally not a cookie-cutter hero/main character

I can't go into many details without spoilers but wow, this book blew me away. The story is incredibly well-paced, complex and hits hard when it means to. The story of Rin is fascinating, cruel, and quite tragic, and seeing Rin adapt and change throughout the novel is very well done her motivations at any point make sense and are understandable. She is a lovely protagonist to follow around and I was never bored. I read along while listening to the audiobook and devoured it in about two days. Highly recommend!

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2 Leute fanden das hilfreich

Not sure

I will have to see if the second book gets better. I came here after loving Babel and was very invested in the first half of the book but feel more and more weirded out by the story and protagonist. I Im very torn and not sure how to describe it, but my issue are more with the stylistic choices not with technical problems. The protagonist becomes somehow extremely unlikable. Spoiler: Literally genocidal mass murderer. I actually dont want to see her redemption arc, this whole thing just went too far. And it has not made any sense yet. And the story and lore make it seem like you just can not top this power level in two more books. So it feels a bit like dragonball, where the creators just added stuff so that goku could still face some challenges and not be god level oo. Ugh, but maybe there is a chance that this is a masterpiece because it will solve all these issues perfectly. So I am sadly not loving it but will continue listening the second book to see.

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Probably not for me

I haven't reached the midpoint of the story yet, but I don't feel like continuing with this audiobook. It's a decently written story I suppose, but it simply cant hold my interest. So far it's the well known underdog trope, not done worse than usual, but also not done any more interesting. The author is unable to make me care where the story takes any of these characters. It's probably just not my cup of tea.

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Amazing start, great build up, ok ending

Loved the first half of the book. Great story with good character. The second half compared to the start fell a bit behind. Didn't like the main character but, I hope she is the way she is because she needs room to evolve in the next two books. Overall with the lovely audio performance it is a 4.5 star listening experiance.

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2 Leute fanden das hilfreich

WOW!

Where to begin with this masterpiece? The characters are excellent and well developed! The mythology, magic system and world building are deep and interesting! The narration is spot on giving the proper weight to events and lets the characters come to life! The ONLY problem I have is the reveal of the main characters heritage taking away from her achievements and struggle a bit, but overall I'm seriously impressed here!

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1 Person fand das hilfreich

Huge let down

I really wanted to love this book. But it's shockingly overrated. The praise, nominations, and especially the beginning hooked me only to be let down & crushed as the protagonist and plot plunged into a miserable low from which it only descended further and further. The female lead that started badass & relatable soon turned into a whining little crybaby who through the horrific war burning the entire country somehow couldn't stop throwing tantrums over her "boy trouble".
While people perish around her, she doesn't stop whining about her hot young commander not giving her enough attention, to the point that the handsome commander chokes her and tells her that she is a soldier and so must do as her commander says, which is very true.
Then to show that this YA story has some teeth, there are endless chapters describing the most gruesome gorey details of gratuitous violence by their enemies. Only a fraction of all that would have been more than enough to convince the reader & make the point author is trying to make. Then, there's of course the same amount of disgusting details about torture-rape being used by the author as a plot device. Any reader who isn't a psychopath and doesn't get off torture porn would have to skip hours of this.
Overall, more than half of the word count could have been cut by refraining from over-explaining the stuff the reader has already figured out for themselves because they do have a brain capable of forming opinions and thoughts.
I vigorously regret falling into the trap of reading this trash dressed as quality literature.

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1 Person fand das hilfreich