Review: Synopsis is Better Than the Actual Story
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 04 22, 2013
When I first read the synopsis for this book, I thought it was going to be soooo good.  How could it not be? Did you read that synopsis??  The synopsis sounds so incredibly bad ass and really had me excited to read this book, but the story-telling does not do the synopsis justice.  I didn't like the first half of Shadow of Wrath.  I actually thought about putting it down many times.  But, I pushed through and found the ending to actually be pretty good.  The story has a very dark tone throughout.  Even the ending, though it had happy-ending qualities, felt dark and depressing.The characters were weakly developed, at least at first.  The reader would get a sneak peak inside of the character of Dog or Allegra, but then it would stop and not go any farther.  Though, in the epilogue, we are able to see more of Dog's history and part of what made him who he is in the story.Shadow of Wrath is unique in the way that the story is told.  It's in third person narration through the perspectives of a few different characters.  It also showed some journal entries of characters that were not in the main story, which was interesting.  I found it refreshing to see a YA Dystopia told this way.  But, I didn't think it was executed very well.  I felt like a lot of the action scenes, especially at the beginning, were not made out to be as intense as they should have been.  I didn't feel that intensity or raw emotion that should have been projected onto the reader while Dog was fighting in the Arena (until the end).  Thus, it was difficult to connect or sympathize with him.  By the ending, though, I definitely was able to feel sympathy for the characters.  But it took until the end, which is disappointing.