sagareads's reviews
132 reviews

A quick, engaging read that I would consider decent as a debut -- but incredibly underwhelming as a Garth Nix book. I'm especially unimpressed since I wouldn't have found the premise interesting enough to pick up the ARC if it weren't for Nix's name on the cover. 

This book displays none of the creativity, originality, or depth that I've enjoyed in Nix's other books. The concept is simple to the point of nearing cliche, the characters are largely flat, and the pacing didn't wow me. The protagonist spends most of the book lamenting how he doesn't know what to do about the increasingly sinister events building; then another character's sudden change of heart initiates a madcap, high-stakes dash to the resolution. (And a character who seemed to point to a more complex plot turns out to be a clumsy red herring.)

The cheap ending -- with an extremely minimal

"your species isn't advanced enough to understand"

explanation of events -- resolves the explicit plot, but fails to address or develop any of the characters' emotional or interpersonal struggles, so it feels shallow.

In the end, very little has changed in the characters' lives; the biggest development seems to be that the main characters invited their younger sisters to their D&D group.

There's a lot of emphasis put on the characters playing D&D, with the author's note describing Nix's love of the game, but ultimately this reads like a campaign by a very inexperienced DM.

That said, it was fun enough to read, and the middle grade target audience probably won't see all the flaws I have.

Nothing wrong with the book, it just came rather unexpectedly (though, fortunately, not without warning) to a scene with a level and type of gore that repulsed me enough for me to put it down. Before that I was enjoying it; I liked the atmosphere and the writing. But I wasn't enthralled enough to keep going and read through that scene.

A character agreed to have his fingernail pulled out, for plot reasons

I was enjoying this book for a while, but found the number of coincidences and stereotypes on which the plot relied really off-putting. Honestly I pretty much hit one conversation / sequence that felt so fake that I realized that the only way I would find the plot believable going forward was if a significant portion of the side characters were completely lying to and manipulating the main character -- and then realized that if this were the case, I would still find the book incredibly frustrating for forcing me to sit with the ignorant main character for hundreds of pages. So I decided not to put myself through that, no matter which of these two options turned out to be the truth.

Honestly, everything from the time Lukan entered Zandrusa's cell to the end of his next meeting with the Scrivener felt *incredibly* contrived -- and that's where I stopped reading. The actions and words of both Zandrusa and the Scrivener made me feel like they were both duping Lukan for their own purposes, but he never considered this a possibility or questioned the information they gave him.

I might have kept going to see if maybe my instincts were correct and Lukan would soon find himself a pawn in these women's game, but the entire sequence with Captain Vargas just turned me off SO badly. Lukan made an immediate, very strong assumption based on the captain's appearance that the man was a stupid coward who'd paid his way into his position. I kept reading primarily because I wanted to see that assumption bite Lukan in the ass. But nope, the captain was in fact a stupid coward, and Lukan would have gotten away with it were it not for bad timing. And then he jumps five stories into the ocean? And is fine? And the guy who rowed him to the tower doesn't question him when he pops up soaking wet and says to row like hell back to the city?

Yeah, that's not working for me.