My Rating: 3.5 stars
This book was okay but not amazing. It felt very nostalgic of what I used to read back in college and high school. This book is the first of a YA fantasy series that’s set in a world where there’s a chosen one who’s meant to draw out the power of their companion of choice and fight against the demons that are sent to destroy humanity. From what I can tell, the world and language in this book appears to be inspired by Italy.
Our chosen one, Alessa, is having trouble finding a companion she can head into war with. The problem being that she keeps killing them. Whenever she tries to touch her partner to draw out the partner’s power, she accidentally ends up killing them because she’s too powerful. The whole book’s premise is very interesting and one that I haven’t read much about. Instead of having just one chosen one who’s meant to use their powers and fight the enemy, the chosen one in this book is meant to find a partner to work with to take down the enemy. From what I understand, she’s kind of like an amplifier? She draws on their power and blasts it out at an impenetrable force.
I really enjoyed the diverse set of characters in this book, especially Dante. I loved Dante and Alessa’s banter and most definitely enjoyed the whole bodyguard/protector trope. I really want to find an adult fantasy or adult romance book with a character like Dante because he’s got that depth, levity, and sarcastic humor that I love and crave. This book also has a host of other characters and by the end of the book, we’ve got this weird, eclectic group of characters that are now a found family of sorts. I liked seeing how they grew close over the course of the book and how the author didn’t shy away from making that transition from “awkward acquaintances who are forced to spend time together” to “close friends who are ready to take down beetle and cockroach looking demons”.
I also liked the conversation around religion/government’s roles in societal issues. There was a discussion around how much religion is manipulated over time by men and the government and that definitely rings true in the current real world.
My main complaint with this book is the world building. Let me preface this by saying that I don’t read many fantasy books. But I didn’t think that I’d struggle with a YA fantasy so again, maybe I overestimated myself but still. I honestly was waiting for the author to just info dump on me because I really needed it lol. There were terms that were introduced that I kind of guessed their meaning of but never really had a clear understanding on. I also didn’t understand certain aspects of the different types of creatures in this world and funnily enough, the creature itself didn’t understand much of what it is. So maybe we’re all collectively meant to figure out the creature’s background information together but I really wish we just knew from the start. I kept having to flip back to the four pages in the beginning where we got a bit of an info dump to understand who’s who, what’s what, and where’s where. I didn’t like that because it’s not very convenient to do when you get to the end of the book and have to flip back to page 10 to understand what’s being referred to.
Since this was a YA fantasy book, there were things that I saw coming a mile away. I personally don’t mind things like that because I’m a reader who values enjoyment over uniqueness of plot. But it’s been a while since I’ve read a YA book so there were times I wanted to nudge the main character and be like “girl open your eyes”.
I also felt like the ending was a bit rushed. We set up for a sequel pretty fast. We got two pages of the “uh oh there’s more” scene and I wish it was a bit longer and we got more insight into what’s happening rather than being told. I don’t know if that made sense. I wish there were signs to it instead of just being thrown at us. Again, I think this is because of the lack of world building. We’re told that there’s a baddie and a goodie side of things but we spent most of the time training on how to take down the baddie. I feel like we never got to really read about why the baddie’s a baddie besides him sending down human eating bug demons. He wasn’t much of a character in the book till the last two pages.
Also, I really wish the demons in the book that we spent three hundred pages “fearing” for weren’t scarab beetle looking demons. But that’s just a personal opinion.
I felt like that scene came out of nowhere. There were no easter eggs that were dropped that indicated that something like this could happen and I think that once agains comes to the world building. For the tenth time, maybe it’s just me and my unfamiliarity with fantasy and YA fantasy but I felt like we weren’t given much background info into the whole battle/war aspect of the book. We were told it’s somewhat of a regular occurrence: there’s a chosen one who picks a partner to battle out the enemy, they hopefully win and save their people, and then things are cool until the evil god decides he wants another war. We never really dove into the previous wars or more on the motives of the evil god/enemy so the ending scenes didn’t grab me as much as I would have liked them to. We’re just told that there’s a good and evil side of things but we spent most of the time reading about the characters training on how to take down the evil side. I feel like we never got to really read about why the bad guy’s a bad guy besides him sending down human eating bug demons. He wasn’t much of a character in the book till the last two pages.
I just didn’t feel that tension in the final scenes that set up for the second book.
All in all, this was a book with some fun characters, good banter, and a bodyguard romance trope. I don’t think I’ll be continuing on with the series because I didn’t really find the plot as gripping to continue.
Have you read this? What did you think of it?