Reviews

The Serpent's Curse by Lisa Maxwell

sonderteaa's review against another edition

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adventurous slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

1.0

  • it's been too long since I read the two previous books, but I was able to understand the plot and characters fine
  • too many character povs that I didn't really care about though
  • overall plot was the usual save the world from evil type of arc
  • way too slow going for me (felt like nothing really happened throughout the entire almost 800 pages)
  • I thought this was the last book BUT there's another one cries

seasonedreadings's review against another edition

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3.0

SIGH...

The Serpent's Curse.....is a book that I read....I completed it. I struggled to rate it because there were interesting things happening in the last 1/8 of the book but at what cost? Why did I have to read 700 pages for crumbs? Life shouldn't be like that! This book wasn't as aimless as The Devil's Thief but it was still bloated and meandering. I can count on one hand the moments I was excited about or interested in.

I must say, The Serpent's Curse was a SLOG to get through. Every word that was in Miss Maxwell's Google Doc made it onto the page, CLEARLY, because this book was just so f*cking long. And it made me realize that I think this story could've been much better told if we had just avoided the whole Seshat issues altogether and this series was just about a bunch of suspiciously young gang leaders trying to steal things and fight racism/xenophobia. The best and most interesting parts of this were actually with Viola, Cela, Jianyu, and Abel trying to outmaneuver Nibsy and steal stuff because it was just so blessedly straightforward. With Harte and Esta's nonsense, it was all visions and vengeful goddesses and earthquakes and time unraveling and magic going away and adolescent relationship drama and it was so...exhausting! Which is a shame cause I really liked Harte and Esta's little bickering relationship in The Last Magician, but now it's just more of the same and we've veered into "Boy and Girl Obsessed With Each Other To The Point Of Destruction" trope and I'm a little too old for that.

I will be reading the next book because obviously, I'm in too deep and need to know how it ends. The Serpent's Curse ended in such a way that plot points are converging and I can only hope that that makes for a more cohesive conclusion cause I can't take much more of this, I'm not strong enough. I couldn't care less about how Harte and Esta wind up at this point, but if Jianyu and Cela don't at least kiss in The Shattered City I'm rating it one star, deadass.

abiisoc's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

allyem_reads's review against another edition

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4.0

3.5 stars

Is this...not the last book in this series? I thought this was a trilogy, but that ending wasn’t an ending?

nitedream's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

caseyae96's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

rubybird16's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? N/A
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

booklover_aakansha's review against another edition

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4.0

Cud've been a bit shorter but it was still great!

Cant wait for the next book.

crushgoil's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional mysterious tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.25

maxamillion125's review against another edition

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adventurous tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes

2.5

I’m on the fence about this book, the majority of the time I felt it was really repetitive (pretty much every time they went to get an artifact it had been sold/stolen/ whatever and so they had to go on a longer mini adventure to get it, happened for EVERY single artifact!). I also found that while most of the time I like a multiple POVs this book just had too many, there were a few characters that I enjoyed reading about but because of the amount of stories we followed I lost interest by the time we got back to my favourites. However, I did enjoy the last 150 ish pages, I thought they were something new and I was actually excited to see what would happen next! But because of the amount of filler In the beginning and middle of the novel I can’t rate it higher than a 2.5. Having said that I’m too invested into the story to not pick up the fourth novel 😅.