Review: 2.5 Really
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 12 3, 2013
I have a couple of problems with this series.I find almost all of the dialogue incredibly awkward; it very rarely flows for me or really entertains me.I can see that the world building is there, but there are so many holes in its construction. So many times as I was reading, I felt like the author was just dropping information into the story that had very little background or previous explanation. And some of the devices introduced in this book felt completely half-assed, like the Shadow Council.I also found the friendship between Sebastian and Ciardis to be pretty forced; it felt like I was constantly being told they had this great friendship and I never really "saw" it develop.The Villains: SpolersThey're generally caricatures without any real substance or motivation. Their backgrounds are very rarely detailed or truly fleshed out so as I read about them I never feel a sense of a.) danger to Ciardis, and b.) a true sense of rational purpose from each of them. In this book we have three: the Duke, the Duchess and the Shadow Man. For the Duke and the Duchess, they are important people with public faces; so if they try to kill someone relatively openly it can be very easily tied back to them. Why would they risk themselves so obviously to commit Ciardis' murder? This problem existed in the last book as well with the Princess Heir. Murder is a crime. Try to commit crimes without any ties to you. Don't kidnap someone and then kill them in a public place, like a garden.The Duke has reason to hate Ciardis for reasons that remained relatively unexplained to the reader until nearly the end of the book. But he's one of the first people who try to kill her. I found the entire scene where Stephanie shows up to save Ciardis to be completely ridiculous. They took the time to banter while there was an assassin in Ciardis' room, really? And I find most of the "banter" in her books to be really stiff and contrived; I also find most of the adverbs Edun uses to describe the characters' speech to be awkward/not really fit the character's tone. Then we have the Duchess. At first she seems really helpful towards Ciardis and tells her about her mother and gives her the location of someone who knew her along time ago. The Duchess then kidnaps Ciardis from a very public setting where anyone could have seen her, hurts/nearly mortally wounds the minstrel she sent Ciardis to in the first place, and then takes her away. All in order to cover up her participation in a crime that took place decades ago, to which the Duchess had the only incriminating piece of evidence to indicate she had anything to do with the crime. I mean, really? The plots holes just compound upon each other every time we meet a new villain.Then the Shadow Man. So he's trying to start a war in the forest, and kidnaps Ciardis to act as the catalyst to start this war. Because killing her will spark this war? Why would the Shadow Man killing her spark a war if the Duke or Duchess killing her would have no ramifications? Every "major" villain tends to just be an unbalanced psychopath without any real, reasonable, and calculated motivations on why they are the villain. I hate villains like this. Making someone into a murdering psychopath is such an easy way out of giving them any real reasons as to why they do the things they do. Give us a real villain, maybe one who isn't a bag full of crazy, is logical, ruthless, and maybe not so completely and overtly obvious that they the reader remains unaware that they are the villain until the end of the book.A lot of problems with the construction of this series. I'll probably read the next book, but after that if its not better I don't think I can continue reading it.