I wanted so badly to like this book more, it had so much potential!
Thank you to Bookishfirst and Tor Books for sending me an ARC of the book to read and review!
This book is about pirates, mages, dead walkers, a Sherlockian character, and her sidekick. The storyline is interesting and the world building is great, and still it just wasn’t for me. I really struggled reading the first 300 pages and had to force myself to keep going before I even began to seriously enjoy the story (with only about 100 pages left) and then it was over.
I didn’t like Buc (the lead character) at any point, ever, throughout the entire story. She is nasty, manipulative, and only cares about herself (until the end of the book when it’s way too late for me to change my mind about her), and I just couldn’t relate to her in the slightest.
I did really like some of the other characters like the Pirate Queen, the Ghost Walker, and Eld (Buc’s sidekick), but I think they all needed a little more character building to make them truly stand on their own.
It doesn’t help that Buc is a genius, with most of the book written in first person through her eyes and in a slightly strange language, so I barely knew what she was saying half of the time. I had to reread paragraphs multiple times and still wasn’t completely sure I knew exactly what was going on. The author did add in a few chapters in other characters’ POV to make the story blend better, which I enjoyed. Those chapters were definitely easier to read and understand, and I thought the language flowed better in them.
I wanted so badly to like this book, it had so much potential!
This book is about pirates, mages, dead walkers, a Sherlockian character, and her sidekick. The storyline is interesting and the world building is great, and still it just wasn’t for me. I really struggled reading the first 300 pages and had to force myself to keep going before I even began to seriously enjoy the story (with only about 100 pages left) and then it was over.
I didn’t like Buc (the lead character) at any point, ever, throughout the entire story. She is nasty, manipulative, and only cares about herself (until the end of the book when it’s way too late for me to change my mind about her), and I just couldn’t relate to her in the slightest.
I did really like some of the other characters like the Pirate Queen, the Ghost Walker, and Eld (Buc’s sidekick), but I think they all needed a little more character building to make them truly stand on their own.
It doesn’t help that Buc is a genius, with most of the book written in first person through her eyes and in a slightly strange language, so I barely knew what she was saying half of the time. I had to reread paragraphs multiple times and still wasn’t completely sure I knew exactly what was going on. The author did add in a few chapters in other characters’ POV to make the story blend better, which I enjoyed. Those chapters were definitely easier to read and understand, and I thought the language flowed better in them.
I wanted so badly to like this book, it had so much potential!