Glass Sword by Victoria Aveyard

Glass Sword by Victoria Aveyard

Rating: 1 star out of 5

"Even with an army at my back, I am still alone."

The follow-up to Red Queen, this book follows Mare, a rare person with red blood and silver abilities, as she whines endlessly about her life. Among other complaints, she feels it is hard being the chosen one, hard being alone even though all of your loyal friends are with you, and hard to be so special that no one else can understand. Mare spends the book attempting to find others like her, but it proves time consuming-- so time consuming that it takes up all 400 pages.

Sadly, this is the worst book I have every actually finished. I almost gave up on it many times, and having reached the end, I only regret that I didn't.

As a preliminary matter, I greatly enjoyed the first book, and I wanted to love this one, so no one could be more disappointed than I am about my opinions.

In brief: nothing happens. 400 pages should have been condensed to 100, which could have formed the mediocre beginning of a different book. As nothing happens, the book is incredibly boring. I've had heavy academic reading that was more interesting. There never seemed to be a point to the story.

Mare, whose conflict and overall personality I liked in the first book, becomes unlikable and unrelatable here. At times, I would have rejoiced in her death. The other characters in the book are ignored to a point that is almost farcical, except for when Mare is insulting and denigrating them. She gives special attention in this to her best friends. The only character given any real development is Cal, if you are paying very close attention. New characters are given so little time that I couldn't confidently list which ability a single one of them had even seconds after setting down the book.

Love triangles (or one girl with three male love interests as exists here) don't usually bother me. But for there to be a romantic story, there needs to be some kind of romance. Here, all the men just immediately fall for Mare. She then insults them endlessly in her head before, once in a long whole, kissing one of them briefly. I didn't get the impression that Mare has genuine feelings for any of them. I sometimes wondered if she is capable of genuine feelings at all. There is no sense of "Oh! She'd be good with him!" or "Oh! But she really loves him!" because Mare  seems to think they are all beneath her and barely tolerates them. The partial exception to this is Maven-- she is low-key obsessed with Maven, although he's evil and has treated her horribly. Despite her obsession, though, she doesn't seem to like Maven, much less have the capacity to love him.

Finally, Aveyard isn't a very good writer. She uses superfluous words to try to make the most dramatic, poignant, and quotable metaphors and similes possible. This wouldn't merit mentioning if it were done sparingly. It is done in nearly every paragraph-- sometimes more than once in a paragraph, and in a very heavy-handed and painful way. It is distracting, unnecessary, and detracts from the book.

Despite my incredibly negative feelings, I will probably read the third book to see if things turn around at all, but I'm not optimistic. If anyone is reading this who hasn't read the first book, I would advise you not to start the series.

I'd recommend this to no one. If you really liked the first book, skip this one entirely, get someont to spoil the last 10 pages for you, and pick up the third one hoping for the best.

The Pact by Roberta Kagan

The Pact by Roberta Kagan

Rating: 2 stars out of 5

"That's what I love about reading. You can go to places that are scary and dangerous without ever leaving the safety of your room."

I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. 

I was incredibly excited to pick this book up. I have relatives who are Jewish and novels set in the WWII time period are incredibly resonant to me. This time period also, almost by definition, tends to provide a lot of drama and conflict that it's easy to sink your teeth into.

The book opens with a bang in 1940, and if the first chapter were the only thing I had to go on I would have said this could surely be an international bestseller. In it, the main protagonist  (Anna) and her family are discovered by the gestapo. I was immediately on the edge of my seat and dying to know what happens next.

Unfortunately what happens next is that we are taken back to Anna's childhood and her relationship with two friends, Elisa and Bernie, and one frenemy, Dagna (who bizarrely is not currently mentioned in the book description despite being a huge part of the story). We flash forward to the 1940 capture again only twice-- once about a third of the way through the book and once at the very end. These sections were gripping. The book ends on a cliff-hanger so amazing that it made me want to read the next book in the series, something I'd have said was unlikely 10 pages before. 

Despite the problems I am about to describe, the book generally held my attention, and I think Kagan is a writer with solid ideas for plot and it's execution. 

Unfortunately, all of the main characters but one were unlikable. Anna vacillates between almost too naïve to be believed and profoundly observant-- for instance she literally does not know that lesbians exist, and truly thinks an anti-Semite she's dating won't care once she tells him she's a Jew. But! as a child, she's able to divine that her maid is upset with her not for anything actually having to do with her, but because being around her makes the maid's daughter want expensive things. It was sometimes hard to feel like Anna was a real person.

In the meantime, Dagna is a raging anti-Semite, unbelievably manipulative, and cruel. Elisa is shallow, vain, and incredibly stupid, as well as disloyal. It was hard to feel any sympathy for them. Bernie was kind, principled, and level headed, but forgettable for much of the book, as the main focus of the book is Anna and she thinks far more about Elisa and Dagna. 

While there's hope that some of the following points may be cleared up in the final print edition, the way the dialogue was written throughout was stilted and awkward. The characters all spoke to one another very formally and unnaturally, even for the time period. A lot of the text was repetitive or told instead of showing. For example at one point we are told Anna loves books; one sentence later we are told Anna loves to read. This could have been effectively shown by her regularly going to a library or reading, and in fact it was later, so this felt pointless. Descriptions were often simplistic. For example one character is simply described as having  "a chubby face, bright blue eyes, and light brown hair". I don't think authors should wax poetic about every little thing, but it felt forced, not like I was coming upon information naturally in the course of the story.

A final pet peeve was that, whenever a Jewish character would say a Hebrew or Yiddish word out loud to another Jewish character, they would immediately verbally follow it with the English translation, as though another Jewish person would not know what the word goyim meant. I understand the desire for the audience to understand the dialogue but I think it would have been better to let them figure it out from context, or from another character's thoughts on the remarks made, or even, if necessary, from Google. 

I would recommend this to fans of historical fiction set during WWII, and those who are all about a good cliffhanger.