Review: Read for the big story but don't expect too much
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 01 28, 2014
First person narrative can be tricky. The Aranean Nation series has had some really good examples of it; this wasn't one of them. The main character, Zuri, spends the entire book confined to a room because of an injury. She therefore doesn't know anything about what's going on outside and people won't tell her because they don' trust her. Any hints she gets are frustratingly vague for me as the reader. What's worse, Zuri shows very little inclination to investigate them. Basically, 90% of the book is her in a room with one or two other people not talking about what's important. It means everything that matters, that actually happens, the reason for all this going on in the first place, has to be explained by the villain in a cliche horror movie monologue. I was waiting for the mustache twirling to commence.This was the wrong narrator to choose for a story of such importance in the overarching plot of this series. I felt cheated because everything I needed to SEE, I had to be told by someone, like they just summarized the book that never was. I was also disconnected from the characters, including Zuri, because there was so little interaction going on. Based on everything Zuri and Henri had together before the end, I don't find their romance believable at all. It was lukewarm at best, confusing at worst, and the ending for them felt very rushed and incomplete. A huge chunk of their courtship was missing for me. As for the big mystery of the plague, I won't spoil it for you, but I will say I expected something... else. Or more maybe. Definitely not the simplistic strategy and motive that actually got revealed.There are issues with this book that could have been corrected in edits: strange dialogue, vague plot points, missing romantic elements, etc. However, given how limited Zuri's point of view was, I'm not sure it would have helped the story overall. Like I said, read this to know what's going on in the Aranean Nations, but don't expect too much from it.