Ruin and Rising by Leigh BardugoMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Well. That's that, then.
I just ... *sigh* This was just not the epic conclusion I was hoping for, okay?
Maybe I would have enjoyed it more if I actually liked Alina. She was just so meh as a character, such a washed out personality and just, the whole Alina-and-Mal thing was such a drainer. I wanted a fantasy, action adventure novel with fun characters and maybe a lil side of love. But this was all tracing fingers and smouldering gazes and 'oh! My heart!' moments that I really didn't care for. Mal was ruined for me in the second book, so I actually didn't want them to be together, so this book trying so hard to match them up was just frustrating. Instead of an epic fantasy conclusion, this is the Alina-and-Mal love story. So yeah, ZERO MARKS for that.
The story itself seems way too drawn out. They travelled to so many different places and I honestly had no clue why or where or what exactly was going on. It just seemed a bit pointless at times. Also, suddenly we have a merry band of BFFs so you gotta figure out who is who and learn to love them because they have 'always been there for Alina' (lies). That being said, I liked the merry band of BFFs (MBOB) because at least some of them had a bit of personality. Zoya brings some much needed sass, but sadly it's not enough.
Nikolai is the saving grace of this entire story. He's actually fun and has some cool moments and he's still got that cheekiness that I love so dearly. I got so mad at Alina for mooning over Mal when Nikolai was available. (view spoiler)
The Darkling is still a great character, but I think he's a bit of a shadow of his former self (excuse the pun) compared to the last two novels. Why is he so obsessed with making Alina love him? She's a total bore. Darkling, you can do better mate. I feel like he could have had a stronger presence in this book, but again, he kinda took a backseat to the Alina-and-Mal love fiesta.
Considering it's only 350 pages, there's a lot crammed into this book. I thought it would be mostly focused on the quest for the bird but it was so busy with everything else that the bird didn't really rate. (view spoiler)
I have a lot of spoilery thoughts and feelings on this one but if I rant too much I'll never stop. Safe to say, this was a pretty disappointing conclusion to the series, and had me scratching my head a little. I'm glad I read Six of Crows first because that duology is absolutely incredible and I would never have believed it if I'd read this series first (I do kinda wanna re-read SoC now just for the gratuitous cameos).
It's on par with the other two books in terms of entertainment, in that it still has a fair amount of action that travels at a decent pace, bu there's nothing particularly thrilling in the conclusion and it doesn't really stand out as anything special. Rather disappointing, really.
View all my reviews
No comments:
Post a Comment