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Jamie A. Waters

Teoksen To Kill a Fae tekijä

14 teosta 165 jäsentä 25 arvostelua

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To Kill a Fae by Jamie A Waters
The Dragon Portal series #1. Dark fantasy, fea, demons, dragons and pixies. Cliffhanger.
Sabine has been hiding for more than ten years, not only is a land that is hostile, but also hiding her true self under a glamour so know one knows who, or what, she is. Malek, a stranger, accepts her mark of a debt when he helps her one night. There is something compelling about him.
Everyone is keeping secrets. Because spilling them might also spill blood.

Dark and compelling, the story starts out with Sabine being hunted and that scenario happens over and over. There is a large cast to keep up with as the danger grows and she has to make difficult decisions. Some that are beyond her control.

Cliffhanger as the story continues in the next book.
A bright spot: the pixies. 🧚 and the artwork at the beginning of the chapters.
… (lisätietoja)
 
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Madison_Fairbanks | 4 muuta kirja-arvostelua | Nov 25, 2023 |
I DNFed at roughly 90% but I probably should've done so much sooner.
The writing was strangely appealing to me. Don't get me wrong there isn't any particularly remarkable prose but it just flowed very pleasantly.
But this book has quite a few major issues surrounding the MC.
She is introduced as a badass everyone is afraid of but she never does or ever did a single thing we know about that justifies this supposed reputation in the slightest. (Apart from that one intro scene that is meant to captivate the reader.)

She is, in fact, a very obvious goodie-two-shoes that wouldn't harm a fly even if it killed her.
She is surrounded by overbearing hunky and sexy men who all want her badly.
They all patronize her constantly to a sickening degree but the author constantly tries to excuse this and somehow explain that she is a strong independent woman despite constantly being pushed around and rarely ever speaking up for herself beyond a token effort.

The rough plot outline, while not being anything remarkable or original, was decent and so was the world-building at least in so far that it didn't horribly contradict with anything. There was too little worldbuilding to properly judge this very different alternate world.
But the actual plot execution was just boring.
When she isn't being touched borderline inappropriately by someone, the cast is bickering. Constantly. The other major time waste that might annoy other readers (but I didn't much mind) was how much time we spend in internal monologues about being torn about something or mentally arguing back and forth without making any headway.

The plot progress up to 90% of the book consists of:

Attempt on the MCs life.
The traitor that gave her position away was caught.
(Both happen within the intro of the book.)
They acquire a magical artifact in the form of a chalice.
We find out the ship captain is a dragon.
The pub of the demon brothers gets attacked.
She magically binds the chalice to herself.
Absurd and horribly clichéed melodrama about one of the demon brothers potentially sacrificing himself.
dnf

There is, of course, a lot of background exploration of the different characters, etc. So it's not so much a problem of the sum of events but for very long stretches of the book, there is no sense of progress whatsoever. There isn't even any kind of clear goal that characters within the story work towards. People mostly just try to figure out what the situation even is and what they want to do about it.

The book indulges in many of the worst melodrama clichées.

A note on the audiobook. In some regards, the narrator is much better than your average small fry narrator but she has a weird tendency to overemphasize every sentence like it is somehow important. I got somewhat used to it over time until I barely noticed it anymore but it started to really stand out again in later overly melodramatic and emotional scenes. This might have been partly because she didn't care for the story either and constantly had to force herself to not sound bored or exasperated though.
She does different voices really well. I very much enjoyed how she was able to make me recognize characters without employing tacky fake dialects, which is something you usually only encounter with higher-profile narrators.

All in all not entirely horrible but I lost my patience when absurd melodrama started to pile up on top of an incredibly slow-moving plot.

I mostly kept listening as mildly engaging background noise while doing other things until it started to go from just boring to annoying.
… (lisätietoja)
 
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omission | 4 muuta kirja-arvostelua | Oct 19, 2023 |
Having been completely captivated by another series from this author, I had high hopes that I'd find a similar feel here. Knowing that it was a novella, I wasn't sure whether to expect much in the way of suspense or storytelling... but I was pleasantly surprised that it lacked neither and I was instantly swept away.

It starts with the tension of a quick mission against the backdrop of a raging storm, and continues to keep readers at the edge of their seat with camp politics, (not so) whispered romances and a mother's fierce nature to protect her own. While I'm not usually one for the bleakness that tends reign in dystopian novels, there was enough intrigue and banter here to shift the focus away from anything too terribly depressing (because, let's face it, 2020 doesn't need books for that). While, as a mother myself, I found it tense to have the children so involved in the conflict that Skye dealt with, it was also a refreshing change to see a main character have to deal with such a realistic burden as the survival of her own kids within their harsh world.

As this is pegged as a prequel novella, I don't know if the focus shifts to other characters in the first book, but as a taste for the story, it certainly makes for an interesting start. We were given just enough background the "towers" that intimidate the landscape to make a reader want to know more, and it'll be interesting to see where it all leads from here.

I received a free copy of this book from BookSirens in exchange for a fair and honest review.
… (lisätietoja)
 
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Sam.Everard | 2 muuta kirja-arvostelua | Jan 3, 2021 |
I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

To say I enjoyed this book would be a massive understatement. From the very first page, I was captivated by the intrigue of hidden fae, overhanded demons, and a wealth of other magical creatures that all worked to keep Sabine and her secret safe. The author has such a way with words that I wasn't reading the story, I was deep on the streets beside Sabine and Malek as they ran through the dark of night.

I'm excited to see how the story unfolds from this point forward, and eager to see how the tensions between our characters settle. Readers who enjoy fantasy stories like Throne of Glass would most definitely enjoy reading this one.… (lisätietoja)
 
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Sam.Everard | 4 muuta kirja-arvostelua | Jan 3, 2021 |

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Tilastot

Teokset
14
Jäseniä
165
Suosituimmuussija
#128,476
Arvio (tähdet)
½ 4.3
Kirja-arvosteluja
25
ISBN:t
29

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