Mare Barrow lives in a world where people are divided by the color of their blood - the silvers are the elite of the society because of the supernatural abilities they have, while the poor and ordinary reds are the workers and soldiers. Her blood is red, yet she has powers only a silver can have. To cover this up, Mare is forced to live at the palace as a lost silver princess and betrothed to one of the crown princes. As she learns more about life with the silver nobility, she decides to join a red rebellion - and risks everything she's gained and more.
"The truth is what I make it. I could set the world on fire and call it rain."
I've read the first book pretty exactly a year ago and usually I still remember a lot after that time span, but weirdly this wasn't the case for Red queen at all, even though I really loved it. I couldn't even recall any names other than the main character's and while I did know there is a huge plot twist at the end, I apparently forgot everything else about it. Since the second book picks up right where the first one ended, I'm sure that's amazing if you read them back-to-back, but if you don't, it's confusing. Really confusing. I needed at least 50 pages to figure out who each character is and in what way they're even relevant to the story and the main character. I just couldn't get into the story at all, so reading it was frustrating and tiring and it even caused a small reading slump, since it took me so long to finish it. The plot is okay, it's mostly the same thing over and over so it gets boring pretty quickly, but it gets at least better towards the ending. The aspect that's so special about the first book, which is the shocking plot twist, is just completely gone from the second one. You're constantly being reminded of the possibility of betrayal, so when it's actually happening, you've already been expecting it for the last 20 pages, which just takes away all the tension and results in a pretty boring plotline despite the mostly action-filled events. The ending is completely predictable, because the plot twist or betrayal or whatever is placed at the pretty exact time where it is in Red queen as well, so I was already expecting it and it isn't shocking at all. The writing is good, even though it definitely was a bit too dramatic and over-the-top for me and not only the planned repeats of certain phrases got quite annoying after a time, but the writing in general, which seemed repetitiv and unvaried in the use of words and metaphors. Obviously, since this is a sequel, there isn't too much worldbuilding and the little bit that's in it was okay, but to be honest I don't really like the world a lot. I'm just not into that mix of a dystopian novel with magic in it. I prefer the "traditional" kind of high fantasy that takes place in a medieval inspired fictional realm without any highly developed technology like planes and computers. Apart from that, the fantasy elements in this book were quite good and I actually enjoyed them, even though I don't like the superhero-like powers that much.
And don't even get me started on the characters. A lot of new characters are introduced, but seriously every one of them is one-dimensional, flat and in the best case, if we get to see a tiny bit personality, it's a stereotypical character. Everything is so focused on the main character Mare Barrow, it's obnoxious, especially since she's one of the most unlikeable characters I've ever read about. Don't get me wrong, I hate a lot of characters, but I can at least see reasons why other people would like most of them. In this case, I just can't get how anyone can stand Mare, let alone love her? She's so obsessed with herself, extremely arrogant, selfish but thinks she's so selfless and often just plainly stupid. She's so busy pitying herself she's apparently no longer capable of seeing what's going on around her or empathizing with people so she ends up treating them really badly. I can see that Victoria Aveyard wanted to create a gray character, somebody with good intensions but also a lot of flaws, or some kind of anti-heroine who demands your sympathy anyway, but Mare clearly turned out as neither of those, since I can't see a freaking way how you could actually like her. The few minor characters I genuinly liked and remebered, since nearly none of them are in any way memorable, were not likeable for me because of their personality, but rather because of their ability to annoy and make Mare suffer the most. I enjoyed the villain for example a lot, not because he's a good villain, since he's not, but because he fights Mare and hopefully kills her soon so I won't have to suffer anymore reading from her point of view.
All in all, this novel certainly isn't in any way horrible, even though my review kind of makes it look like it is, but I definitely was dissappointed since I enjoyed the first one so much more. I'm not sure why I couldn't love Glass sword as much as I did Red queen, I don't even think neither I nor my taste in books has changed that dramatically. Anyway, I guess I'd still recommend it to everyone who's into fantasy and dystopian YA books, because I feel like I'm basically the only one who didn't absolutely love it, judging from the high ratings on goodreads.
Rating: 2/5 ✹
I'm not going to post a lot of reviews over the next month or so, since I've just started my reread of the A song of ice and fire series, which means I won't come around to reading any new books I could review, but I'm still gonna be trying to post a tag weekly. I hope you enjoyed this review and you're having a nice day!
Leah
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