In the aftermath of a long war, Paladia’s new ruling class of corrupt guild families and depraved necromancers, whose vile undead creatures helped bring about their victory, holds Helena captive.
According to Resistance records, she was a healer of little importance within their ranks. But Helena has inexplicable memory loss of the months leading up to her capture, making her enemies wonder: Is she truly as insignificant as she appears, or are her lost memories hiding some vital piece of the Resistance’s final gambit?
To uncover the memories buried deep within her mind, Helena is sent to the High Reeve, one of the most powerful and ruthless necromancers in this new world. Trapped on his crumbling estate, Helena’s fight—to protect her lost history and to preserve the last remaining shreds of her former self—is just beginning. For her prison and captor have secrets of their own . . . secrets Helena must unearth, whatever the cost.
Comment: This has to be one of the most hyped books of the past years. Yes, I have seen it everywhere too but honestly never had the urge to try it myself because it was labeled as dark fantasy and my tastes aren't much in this direction nowadays. I really had no plans to read this book, but coincidences of life, my best friend has read it and loved it and she is quite persuasive in letting her reasons be known, so I decided to give it a go, more so since she let me borrow her copy.
This is the tale of Helena Marino, a young woman who wakes up with a loss of memories, in captivity and about to be tortured so that her enemies can force her memories out, with the idea she might be hiding something. For a while, nothing else exists beyond what she needs to endure and the weird hint that she needs to keep her memories locked, at the same time she wishes to know what she is hiding. Who did this to her? It certainly has to do with the war lost and how Helena was also part of the Resistance, but exactly what role did she have in the past events? How can she fight or resist what her big enemy Ferron is doing without thinking she might reveal a secret that could defeat his side once and for all...?
I'll start by saying that, as I tend to do, once I've finished the book and had time, I did check out several reviews, both positive and negative, written about this book and I've concluded that while I understand both sides, and while I liked the book in general for its premise and ideas, I wasn't as fond of the writing. I just cannot agree with those who say this was written beautifully. Yes, it was a huge effort in such a long book (the edition I read had 922 pages) and the author clearly had to organize a lot, but I was not moved by the writing. I think the amount of time she took into giving so many detailed scenes about repetitive situations should have been used to add emotion to her characters. Sadly to me, none of them seemed to be people I could care about in the long term.
I suppose this is both a blessing and a pity, because I was able to continuously maintain my emotional detachment from what was being told. I just don't think the writing offered me enough depth and emotions to feel the sadness and the despair the characters were showing throughout all the terrible things being described. My best friend loved this dichotomy and she likes the uncountable descriptions of the war and so on, but I don't usually appreciate that, so this detachment kind of worked in my favor.
On the other side, the romance didn't seem to be as fascinating and larger than life as it hinted at. I mean, I understand and I see where fans find the love and the devotion, but as the story developed, while I recognized what was happening and appreciated the subtlety of what the protagonists were dealing with, I wasn't especially moved by that. Nevertheless, I admit I was beyond happy that they are in love and that their path led to the best HEA they could achieve, considering the events and the secondary issues around them.
The book is divided into three parts, the first is harrowing and seems there's no way to recover from what takes place there, but then the second part comes, set four years before, and we get to see why things like that and what happened to lead the main characters to the place where they were at in the first part. It was a good choice, because the idea is to show the reader that everything can be unreliable and it provided an interesting contrast to what the perception of everything would be. I did like that things aren't black and white in how people should see this story.
The third part was my personal favorite because finally everything is explained and solved as best as it could. Again, I wasn't incredibly impressed by all the little things many readers like to comment on, such as "hidden messages" or "double meaning sentences" and so on, but I liked it that what had to be dealt with, was, and that the main idea of why the war happened in the first place seemed to be taken into a logically solved solution. Unlike some readers, I've loved the extensive epilogue, and the detailed scenes about the "what happened after".
There is some poetry in this story, I cannot lie, and i did love several passages and scenes. But yes, there are lots of triggers in this book and not just because of actual content. The dark aspect of "dark fantasy" can mean different things for readers, but this one is certainly full of awful things and descriptions. I don't think this was necessary and, to be fair, removing some of these things would bring the story to a more acceptable length. I get it that this is what the author wanted to write but it was quite an effort when it didn't have to be. Editing would have helped.
No comments:
Post a Comment