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The Savior's Series #1
The Savior's Champion
Tobias Kaya doesn't care about The Savior. He doesn't care that She's the Ruler of the realm or that She purified the land, and he certainly doesn't care that She's of age to be married. But when competing for Her hand proves to be his last chance to save his family, he's forced to make The Savior his priority.
Now Tobias is thrown into the Sovereign's Tournament with nineteen other men, and each of them is fighting -- and killing -- for the chance to rule at The Savior's side. Instantly his world is plagued with violence, treachery, and manipulation, revealing the hidden ugliness of his proud realm. And when his circumstances seem especially dire, he stumbles into an unexpected romance, one that opens him up to unimaginable dangers and darkness.
Now Tobias is thrown into the Sovereign's Tournament with nineteen other men, and each of them is fighting -- and killing -- for the chance to rule at The Savior's side. Instantly his world is plagued with violence, treachery, and manipulation, revealing the hidden ugliness of his proud realm. And when his circumstances seem especially dire, he stumbles into an unexpected romance, one that opens him up to unimaginable dangers and darkness.
562 pages, ebook
First published April 24, 2018
582 people are currently reading
11766 people want to read
About the author
Jenna Moreci
8 books3,461 followersJenna Moreci is an award-winning romantasy and writing craft author and YouTube sensation. Her first installment in The Savior’s Series, The Savior’s Champion, was voted one of the Best Books of All Time by Book Depository. Following the release of her first writing craft book, Shut Up and Write the Book, she’s been asked to speak for many literary communities and affiliations about the writing process and romantasy genre, including Robinson College at the University of Cambridge, the University of Groningen, and the London Screenwriters’ Festival.
Born and raised in Silicon Valley, Jenna spends her free time snuggling up with her charming husband and their tiny rescue pup, Buttercup.
Born and raised in Silicon Valley, Jenna spends her free time snuggling up with her charming husband and their tiny rescue pup, Buttercup.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,318 reviews
May 28, 2021
i picked this up because the synopsis was giving me adult ‘hunger games’ meets ‘the selection’ (maybe even a little ‘throne of glass’) vibes and, even though i knew this would recycle some very common fantasy tropes, i was in the mood for that kind of book. and this did not disappoint.
while i thought the story itself was exciting and interesting, what i enjoyed most about this is the dialogue. i found many characters to be charming and witty and hilarious. i also really enjoyed the interactions between tobias and leila. they play well off of each other and i loved their banter.
i do think if you go poking around, im sure you will find some holes in the world-building, some one-dimensional characters, or even repetitious narrative. but honestly, this was such a mood read for me, that i didnt care about any of that.
i had the fun i was wanting to have, so thats good enough for me. lol.
↠ 4.5 stars
while i thought the story itself was exciting and interesting, what i enjoyed most about this is the dialogue. i found many characters to be charming and witty and hilarious. i also really enjoyed the interactions between tobias and leila. they play well off of each other and i loved their banter.
i do think if you go poking around, im sure you will find some holes in the world-building, some one-dimensional characters, or even repetitious narrative. but honestly, this was such a mood read for me, that i didnt care about any of that.
i had the fun i was wanting to have, so thats good enough for me. lol.
↠ 4.5 stars
May 11, 2018
Disclaimer:
* This updated review contains spoilers for The Savior’s Champion.
** I received the ARC of The Savior’s Champion in exchange for an honest review. I am subscribed to the YouTube channel of the author. But an author is not their book. And me liking the author, will not sway my opinion in this review. Also, me critiquing a book is not a personal attack on the author, no matter who they may be.
That being said, I reviewed this book using the following criteria:
- Writing
- Characters
- Plot
- World building
Writing:
This novel is full of cliché lines and awkward sentences. Which makes it impossible to read and take seriously. The way the characters talk, feels awkward and unnatural.
Some examples:
- ‘You carry so much pain. Enough to crush any other man, but not you. You are always strong. Always being the man you need to be the man everyone else needs you to be. But you don’t need to be that man right now.’ (These lines were said by the love interest to the MC and they made me pretty much cringe).
- ‘What kind of squeeze? Like a friendship squeeze? Maybe it was a friendship squeeze.’ (Don’t forget, this is a grown woman, who speaks in such manner).
- ‘And you all are bullies.’ (Grown man saying this, because he does not get his way. While a few chapters back the same character curses every other sentence).
- ‘That one, on the left he’s covered in tattoos. Don’t fathers despise tattoos?’ ‘Perhaps he’s open-minded.’
- Her hair, Her breasts, Her lips, Her breasts, Her eyes, Her breast. (This is how the MC sees I believe his love interest).
- ‘Are you joking? I can’t touch it! My filthy peasant hands. No, I’m unworthy.’ (75% into the book the MC sees himself as an unworthy peasant with filthy hands… honestly?).
Especially dialogue between the main character and his family felt forced in some way. Like they were aware of the reader.
So, the next thing is a bit petty of me. But the overuse of a certain word. It might be just me, but I started noticing this somewhere around 30% of the book.
“Apologies” was used 65 times and I don't know why but it really got on my nerves.
Overall, I give the writing a 3 out of 5. The writing style didn't blow me away. Dialogue was a bit clunky. Overall, I found the writing subpar at best.
Characters:
Writing aside, there’s nothing compelling about the characters. They are more of caricatures. With one or two characteristics over exaggerated. I found that in this novel bad guy are bad, with no reason for being bad. There are no redeeming qualities to any of them. There is no depth whatsoever. And the same for the good guys. The good guys are just good, because they are good.
Some examples:
- Kaleo is one of ‘the beasts’. He is a beast because he is big and strong and… a sadist? There are no other characteristics. He is a killer hired by the Sovereign, to kill the competition, win and eventually kill the Savior. We don’t get the reason for why he is the way he is. He is just a bad guy, with no redeeming qualities. Just three characteristics. That’s how flat the characters are in TSC.
- There are 20 men competing in the tournament. All off them receive a laurel (an extra name given to each competitor in the tournament). Which means you have 40 names to remember. For more than 75% of the book I did not know who they were referring too. And most of the time it did not feel like they were important in any way.
They were nothing more than props for the main character to interact with.
So the constant dying of the competitors did not feel me with dread. I did not sit on the edge of my seat anxious to read who would die next. When they eventually died I was glad there would be one less name to remember.
- Even when Milo (MC’s best friend) was killed. I felt nothing. He was just an annoying fly, that got squashed against the wall. Tobias feels bad about the death of his best friend, for about two seconds. Which to me seemed unrealistic.
- Tobias (the MC) is a Gary Stu (the male equivalent to his love interest Mary Sue). Which makes him annoying and whiny and caring and honest and handsome? (I honestly cannot remember how he is supposed to look.) It was quite obvious Tobias would survive the tournament. Not because of his smarts or bravery, or even his artist skills. He survived because of the Savior. Tobias has no actual strength. He was ready to die like a sheep to the slaughter. And he basically sat and waited around for someone else to save him. He actually tried to lose some of the challenges. Because he fell in love with a girl he had known for two seconds.
Some examples of Tobias being annoying and whiny:
- He tells us how he will never enter the tournament. Because it’s stupid and pointless and he hates the Savior (for no apparent reason). But we all know he will enter, otherwise there would be no point to this book. So, hearing him say it over and over again was just redundant. And when he finally did enter it did not came as a big shock when he was chosen as one of the competitors. (again, otherwise there would be no point to this book).
- His reasoning to enter the tournament was uninspired. He enters because of his sister. She needs medicine and they need the money. Knowing he probably will not survive, he enters the tournament to save his sister. Being the perfect martyr. At this point I did not care about the sister. She was a plot device in form of a bland cardboard cutout.
- He is an artist, who survives the tournament. He can fight, even though he never fought before. He can also use a bow. Even though he never actually used a bow in his life. He kills with a single arrow. This is brushed off as beginner’s luck. Which is ridiculous. You cannot just pick up a bow and arrow and think you can hit a moving target.
The true Savior:
- The Savior is a Mary Sue of the Mage variety. She is a special little snowflake. Not only is she beautiful, she is the only one with the special snowflake power. She is kind and beautiful and flawless.
- Every single time when Tobias sees Leila (The Savior), she is described as beautiful with long hair and slim waist and pretty dresses and she tastes like peaches?
- Not only is she beautiful, with no flaws, she is a badass and can take care of herself. But only till the MC needs to be a hero and save the day. Then she becomes a damsel in distress.
- Overall, she is a flat character. A prop for the main character to interact with. The insta love in this book felt unreal to me. They fell in love in what felt were a few weeks?
The lack of character depth contributes to my overall disinterested of the things that happen to the characters. I am supposed to feel for Tobias losing people in the tournament. But I just could not bring myself to care.
Overall, I give characters 1 out of 5. They were unlikable and had no depth to them. It felt like a lot of characters were put into place to fit the story and to propel it forward. It did not feel like the main character did anything. He was just there and things happened to him and he reacted. But he never made things happen.
Plot:
I guessed the first major plot twist in the first chapter on page 16 of the e-book. Tobias was talking to his mother and sister and they randomly reminded us that the Sovereign cut out the tongue of his wife’s murderer. Which made it immediately obvious who ordered the kill. Why else would you cut out a tongue?
The other plot twist I guessed as soon as we met the Savior. She was described as beautiful with small eyes and no character whatsoever. Just a blank slate. While at the same time the MC described Leila’s beauty. The fact that Tobias found Leila more beautiful than the Savior, told me everything I needed to know. I mean the book is called the Savior’s Champion and Tobias is the main character who is in love with Leila.
Pacing:
The book had a really inconsistent pacing. The first three chapters flew by. And I was actually worried that it was going too fast. But then Moreci hit the brakes and the book went by at a snail’s pace. It felt like they were in the tunnel for at least 80% of the book. Most of the challenges took place in the tunnel.
The whole tournament was boring. In my opinion there is not much to it. On the cover of the Savior's Champion it reads: Respect the labyrinth, obey the labyrinth. So, I assumed this to be a labyrinth full of deathly challenges. I am sorry to say, but the challenges were idiotic at best.
During the tournament there are messages written on the floor (hang on | careful | stop | go | watch you step | no touching). I don’t understand why Moreci chose to take the tension away, by pretty much telling us and the competitors what is going to happen in the tunnel.
A few examples of the idiocy of the challenges:
- By putting a message on the floor that says: watch your step. While there are footprints painted on certain parts of the floor. It is quite obvious what will happen, if you step on the wrong tile. This takes the tension right out of the book.
- There is also not much to the rest of the tournament. It is supposed to be dangerous. One of the characters even refers to the tournament as ‘the most savage yet’. But what is savage about some thorny vines, ribbons, poems and biting teacup pigs? I was hoping for challenges that kept me on the edge of my seat. But that definitely was not the case.
- Some of the challenges were pretty much laughable. Like the one with the presents for the Savior. Tobias chooses to draw the Savior. But him being the artist that he is, he can’t help but draw Leila instead. He is basically so infatuated with a girl he knows for about a week, he chooses to draw her and risk his life by failing at the easiest challenge.
Internal plot:
There was not a lot of internal growth or internal development between big external plot points. So, when I was quarter the way to the end and I looked back. It felt like the story hasn’t moved anywhere since page one.
The resolution of this novel left me feeling nothing at all. I wasn’t gripped by the story. Tobias surviving the tournament was blatant from the very beginning. The same as him being able to run off with Leila. The ending did not make me feel like I could not wait to read the next book in this series.
I give the plot 1 out of 5. Not only did I guess two major plot points and the ending of this novel. I also did not see any internal growth in any of the characters. And because of that I did not see the point of this story. This was just a love story set in an underdeveloped fantasy world.
World building:
This brings us to world building. The world in this book is flat. I guess it resembles Ancient Greece? You have the Savior and the Realm which is prosperous because of her. And that’s pretty much everything you get to know about the world.
Magic system:
The magic in this novel didn’t make any sense to me. Only the Savior has magic and this is not explained. This is just shrugged off as part of this world. There is no reasoning behind the magic system.
I give world building 1 out of 5. There is simply no world building. Maybe in the sequel? But not in this book.
Personal opinion:
I honestly tried to love this book. But I could not. There was nothing compelling about the story. Not the world or the characters or even the plot. I actually had to force myself to finish this book. It took me a month to read this. Only reason why I finished this book is because I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
I am glad I finally finished the longest 535 pages I ever had to read.
For my subjective rating I would give this book 1 out of 5 stars. I really did not enjoy reading this novel. I pretty much can enjoy a book if found just one of the four criteria to be exceptional. Even if the other three are below average. But this book just lacked a lot in every single criteria.
My rating for the criteria was:
- Writing 3
- Characters 1
- Plot 1
- World building 1
An average rating of 1,5. I rounded up to 2 stars.
Recommendation:
I really thought hard about this one. I cannot really say to whom I would recommend this novel. I guess to people who just started reading fantasy novels. There is basically no world building, so this is a great first step, for people who are hesitant to read fantasy. I do hope that it would not inadvertently put people off of fantasy novels. I honestly would not recommend this book to people who are well versed in fantasy or books in general. If you are just starting to read novels, this might be the book for you. The lack of world building, character depth and plot might not be as blatant to you.
But don’t take my word for it. Read the first few chapters on Moreci’s website and decide for yourself.
* This updated review contains spoilers for The Savior’s Champion.
** I received the ARC of The Savior’s Champion in exchange for an honest review. I am subscribed to the YouTube channel of the author. But an author is not their book. And me liking the author, will not sway my opinion in this review. Also, me critiquing a book is not a personal attack on the author, no matter who they may be.
That being said, I reviewed this book using the following criteria:
- Writing
- Characters
- Plot
- World building
Writing:
This novel is full of cliché lines and awkward sentences. Which makes it impossible to read and take seriously. The way the characters talk, feels awkward and unnatural.
Some examples:
- ‘You carry so much pain. Enough to crush any other man, but not you. You are always strong. Always being the man you need to be the man everyone else needs you to be. But you don’t need to be that man right now.’ (These lines were said by the love interest to the MC and they made me pretty much cringe).
- ‘What kind of squeeze? Like a friendship squeeze? Maybe it was a friendship squeeze.’ (Don’t forget, this is a grown woman, who speaks in such manner).
- ‘And you all are bullies.’ (Grown man saying this, because he does not get his way. While a few chapters back the same character curses every other sentence).
- ‘That one, on the left he’s covered in tattoos. Don’t fathers despise tattoos?’ ‘Perhaps he’s open-minded.’
- Her hair, Her breasts, Her lips, Her breasts, Her eyes, Her breast. (This is how the MC sees I believe his love interest).
- ‘Are you joking? I can’t touch it! My filthy peasant hands. No, I’m unworthy.’ (75% into the book the MC sees himself as an unworthy peasant with filthy hands… honestly?).
Especially dialogue between the main character and his family felt forced in some way. Like they were aware of the reader.
So, the next thing is a bit petty of me. But the overuse of a certain word. It might be just me, but I started noticing this somewhere around 30% of the book.
“Apologies” was used 65 times and I don't know why but it really got on my nerves.
Overall, I give the writing a 3 out of 5. The writing style didn't blow me away. Dialogue was a bit clunky. Overall, I found the writing subpar at best.
Characters:
Writing aside, there’s nothing compelling about the characters. They are more of caricatures. With one or two characteristics over exaggerated. I found that in this novel bad guy are bad, with no reason for being bad. There are no redeeming qualities to any of them. There is no depth whatsoever. And the same for the good guys. The good guys are just good, because they are good.
Some examples:
- Kaleo is one of ‘the beasts’. He is a beast because he is big and strong and… a sadist? There are no other characteristics. He is a killer hired by the Sovereign, to kill the competition, win and eventually kill the Savior. We don’t get the reason for why he is the way he is. He is just a bad guy, with no redeeming qualities. Just three characteristics. That’s how flat the characters are in TSC.
- There are 20 men competing in the tournament. All off them receive a laurel (an extra name given to each competitor in the tournament). Which means you have 40 names to remember. For more than 75% of the book I did not know who they were referring too. And most of the time it did not feel like they were important in any way.
They were nothing more than props for the main character to interact with.
So the constant dying of the competitors did not feel me with dread. I did not sit on the edge of my seat anxious to read who would die next. When they eventually died I was glad there would be one less name to remember.
- Even when Milo (MC’s best friend) was killed. I felt nothing. He was just an annoying fly, that got squashed against the wall. Tobias feels bad about the death of his best friend, for about two seconds. Which to me seemed unrealistic.
- Tobias (the MC) is a Gary Stu (the male equivalent to his love interest Mary Sue). Which makes him annoying and whiny and caring and honest and handsome? (I honestly cannot remember how he is supposed to look.) It was quite obvious Tobias would survive the tournament. Not because of his smarts or bravery, or even his artist skills. He survived because of the Savior. Tobias has no actual strength. He was ready to die like a sheep to the slaughter. And he basically sat and waited around for someone else to save him. He actually tried to lose some of the challenges. Because he fell in love with a girl he had known for two seconds.
Some examples of Tobias being annoying and whiny:
- He tells us how he will never enter the tournament. Because it’s stupid and pointless and he hates the Savior (for no apparent reason). But we all know he will enter, otherwise there would be no point to this book. So, hearing him say it over and over again was just redundant. And when he finally did enter it did not came as a big shock when he was chosen as one of the competitors. (again, otherwise there would be no point to this book).
- His reasoning to enter the tournament was uninspired. He enters because of his sister. She needs medicine and they need the money. Knowing he probably will not survive, he enters the tournament to save his sister. Being the perfect martyr. At this point I did not care about the sister. She was a plot device in form of a bland cardboard cutout.
- He is an artist, who survives the tournament. He can fight, even though he never fought before. He can also use a bow. Even though he never actually used a bow in his life. He kills with a single arrow. This is brushed off as beginner’s luck. Which is ridiculous. You cannot just pick up a bow and arrow and think you can hit a moving target.
The true Savior:
- The Savior is a Mary Sue of the Mage variety. She is a special little snowflake. Not only is she beautiful, she is the only one with the special snowflake power. She is kind and beautiful and flawless.
- Every single time when Tobias sees Leila (The Savior), she is described as beautiful with long hair and slim waist and pretty dresses and she tastes like peaches?
- Not only is she beautiful, with no flaws, she is a badass and can take care of herself. But only till the MC needs to be a hero and save the day. Then she becomes a damsel in distress.
- Overall, she is a flat character. A prop for the main character to interact with. The insta love in this book felt unreal to me. They fell in love in what felt were a few weeks?
The lack of character depth contributes to my overall disinterested of the things that happen to the characters. I am supposed to feel for Tobias losing people in the tournament. But I just could not bring myself to care.
Overall, I give characters 1 out of 5. They were unlikable and had no depth to them. It felt like a lot of characters were put into place to fit the story and to propel it forward. It did not feel like the main character did anything. He was just there and things happened to him and he reacted. But he never made things happen.
Plot:
I guessed the first major plot twist in the first chapter on page 16 of the e-book. Tobias was talking to his mother and sister and they randomly reminded us that the Sovereign cut out the tongue of his wife’s murderer. Which made it immediately obvious who ordered the kill. Why else would you cut out a tongue?
The other plot twist I guessed as soon as we met the Savior. She was described as beautiful with small eyes and no character whatsoever. Just a blank slate. While at the same time the MC described Leila’s beauty. The fact that Tobias found Leila more beautiful than the Savior, told me everything I needed to know. I mean the book is called the Savior’s Champion and Tobias is the main character who is in love with Leila.
Pacing:
The book had a really inconsistent pacing. The first three chapters flew by. And I was actually worried that it was going too fast. But then Moreci hit the brakes and the book went by at a snail’s pace. It felt like they were in the tunnel for at least 80% of the book. Most of the challenges took place in the tunnel.
The whole tournament was boring. In my opinion there is not much to it. On the cover of the Savior's Champion it reads: Respect the labyrinth, obey the labyrinth. So, I assumed this to be a labyrinth full of deathly challenges. I am sorry to say, but the challenges were idiotic at best.
During the tournament there are messages written on the floor (hang on | careful | stop | go | watch you step | no touching). I don’t understand why Moreci chose to take the tension away, by pretty much telling us and the competitors what is going to happen in the tunnel.
A few examples of the idiocy of the challenges:
- By putting a message on the floor that says: watch your step. While there are footprints painted on certain parts of the floor. It is quite obvious what will happen, if you step on the wrong tile. This takes the tension right out of the book.
- There is also not much to the rest of the tournament. It is supposed to be dangerous. One of the characters even refers to the tournament as ‘the most savage yet’. But what is savage about some thorny vines, ribbons, poems and biting teacup pigs? I was hoping for challenges that kept me on the edge of my seat. But that definitely was not the case.
- Some of the challenges were pretty much laughable. Like the one with the presents for the Savior. Tobias chooses to draw the Savior. But him being the artist that he is, he can’t help but draw Leila instead. He is basically so infatuated with a girl he knows for about a week, he chooses to draw her and risk his life by failing at the easiest challenge.
Internal plot:
There was not a lot of internal growth or internal development between big external plot points. So, when I was quarter the way to the end and I looked back. It felt like the story hasn’t moved anywhere since page one.
The resolution of this novel left me feeling nothing at all. I wasn’t gripped by the story. Tobias surviving the tournament was blatant from the very beginning. The same as him being able to run off with Leila. The ending did not make me feel like I could not wait to read the next book in this series.
I give the plot 1 out of 5. Not only did I guess two major plot points and the ending of this novel. I also did not see any internal growth in any of the characters. And because of that I did not see the point of this story. This was just a love story set in an underdeveloped fantasy world.
World building:
This brings us to world building. The world in this book is flat. I guess it resembles Ancient Greece? You have the Savior and the Realm which is prosperous because of her. And that’s pretty much everything you get to know about the world.
Magic system:
The magic in this novel didn’t make any sense to me. Only the Savior has magic and this is not explained. This is just shrugged off as part of this world. There is no reasoning behind the magic system.
I give world building 1 out of 5. There is simply no world building. Maybe in the sequel? But not in this book.
Personal opinion:
I honestly tried to love this book. But I could not. There was nothing compelling about the story. Not the world or the characters or even the plot. I actually had to force myself to finish this book. It took me a month to read this. Only reason why I finished this book is because I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
I am glad I finally finished the longest 535 pages I ever had to read.
For my subjective rating I would give this book 1 out of 5 stars. I really did not enjoy reading this novel. I pretty much can enjoy a book if found just one of the four criteria to be exceptional. Even if the other three are below average. But this book just lacked a lot in every single criteria.
My rating for the criteria was:
- Writing 3
- Characters 1
- Plot 1
- World building 1
An average rating of 1,5. I rounded up to 2 stars.
Recommendation:
I really thought hard about this one. I cannot really say to whom I would recommend this novel. I guess to people who just started reading fantasy novels. There is basically no world building, so this is a great first step, for people who are hesitant to read fantasy. I do hope that it would not inadvertently put people off of fantasy novels. I honestly would not recommend this book to people who are well versed in fantasy or books in general. If you are just starting to read novels, this might be the book for you. The lack of world building, character depth and plot might not be as blatant to you.
But don’t take my word for it. Read the first few chapters on Moreci’s website and decide for yourself.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 25, 2018
I am this book's target audience: I am an adult in her mid-20s, I love fantasy, and I am all for exciting, steamy romance. This book fell flat for me on all fronts.
This review will be long, because I have a lot to say. In fact, I unearthed my long-lost goodreads login info to post this, because the other reviews here genuinely baffle me. I like and respect Jenna Moreci, and have been following her YouTube channel and social media for a couple years now. She is a knowledgeable indie author who very clearly works her ass off, who has done a phenomenal job establishing herself and helping other people, and who created a very intriguing story that I was really looking forward to reading. But the result was incredibly disappointing.
TL;DR: This is like a bloody, brutal version of the Bachelorette that is at least 73K words too long and yet lacks any real depth in world-building, character development, or plot, with a lacklustre romance at its heart. It also felt like less of an adult book, and more like a book exploring adult themes through a YA lens.
Maybe because I was so excited for it to finally come out, because I liked the premise and read the reviews on goodreads and watched the YT reviews from booktubers I respect and whose points of view I value, and was expecting something mind-blowing, something amazing. Maybe my expectations were too high, but look at the reviews! Look at all the hype! So many people saying such good things! Maybe I'm missing something, but this did not deliver on all the promises it and a lot of the reviewers made.
First of all, this novel is 173,000 words -- 173K! -- and yet in all that word count there is hardly any world-building, and what magic there is is poorly explained and superficial. I don't subscribe to the idea that magic has to have a system or rules, but this is supposed to be fantasy with magic, so I would have expected the magic to play a more prominent -- or at least a more obvious -- role than it did outside of the tournament. There were a few instances where something in the book didn't make sense even from the protagonist's perspective, but he just brushed it off, assuming that it was just all done by magic and accepting everything as it was. The most interesting display of magic by far was But we got no real sense of how the existence of magic shaped this world, or how it worked, how it was doled out or used by the Savior, etc. Sometimes things just happened, and voilà -- magic!
This book could -- I would even venture to say should -- have been 73,000 words shorter. There were so many scenes that could have been cut, especially where the dialogue just went on and on and on without a whole lot being said, without very much being developed. The romance between the two principal characters felt very sanitized given the rest of the book's vulgarity and extreme brutality. This was supposed to have steamy romance. It didn't feel steamy. Everything was very subdued. There were a lot of conversations between Tobias and his love interest, and they just dragged. The significance of each conversation and how it contributed to making the characters fall deeper and deeper in love was unclear, because we rarely got insight into how what said or did affected him, let alone why. Not until, at one point, he just realized he was in love with her. Just like that -- poof! And conveniently, she was in love with him, too! And they were choosing each other! How very sweet!
Except it didn't feel sweet. Aside from an initial misunderstanding between the two of them, there was no real tension between them, no build-up, no feeling that what they had was anything out of the ordinary. Aside from the circumstances foisted upon them by the tournament, of course, but even all of that felt so unreal, so contrived. There were gaping plot holes and a lack of in-story logic. Like others have said,
Also, There are so many lapses like this, and I found it really frustrating. It didn't help that the tournament just dragged on and on.
I didn't care about Tobias, hardly got a sense of who he was. Leila was more interesting, but not significantly. I didn't understand Oh, and Tobias's best friend, Milo -- This was a problem with a lot of the characters. I didn't care about any of them except Enzo and Orion, because they had the most interesting stories. Even Delphi and Pippa, crowd favourites, didn't do much for me, though I recognize the intention behind them.
Oh, on the subject of characters,
A lot of the reviewers mentioned amazing twists and turns. I saw none. Everything was predictable, very trope-y, so many of the characters were just caricatures, and nothing in the end came as a shock. Except the ending itself, which felt very rushed and dropped off abruptly, in a far too obvious attempt at a hook. After 173K words, the one thing that really shouldn't have been rushed was the ending, and yet it just...ended. There were so many questions left unanswered. Like, I was really bitter about the ending. There was so much lead-up, so much promise of everything being explained and unravelled in the end. And it just didn't happen.
Then there's the gratuitous violence and profanity. I don't care about the profanity, because that's what was promised, although my main issue was that it -- along with the rest of the language -- clashed with the image I had of the world, however faltering. It just seemed a little ridiculous how much of the language in this Ancient Greece-based fantasy world sounded like it belonged to a potty-mouthed American teenager. Oh, and the "Apologies". The constant repetition of "Apologies" really grated on my nerves. It was clearly an attempt to try to show that the society was more formal, or somehow different from the world we live in, but it didn't work very well. Not when the main female characters say things like, "Oh, you're so bad!" and "You sneaky bitch!" (said in a loving way). But whatever. This IS fantasy, after all. I can let that slide if the rest of it works.
But the violence? By the end of the book, Tobias should have been a walking scab. The poor guy was ripped into and beaten at every turn. A lot of authors seem to not understand how long it takes for injuries to heal, even if they're just bruises, but the injuries inflicted on these characters were insane, with a fresh top-up every single day. Add to that a torture scene, And all of this within the space of 30 days, the bulk of it in even shorter bursts of time. I think it's supposed to be implied that the contestants -- Tobias in particular -- heal much more quickly than is normal because of the healer, but this isn't clearly addressed. Just how quickly is he healing, and how well? Is it overnight? Does he become good as new? Or are there lingering effects (which, in most cases, it seemed like there were)? How significant were these effects, how long did they linger, and so on? Plus, even healed there will be a long-term effect, like scarring or mutilation. There IS a character who scars himself on purpose, after all. But Tobias comes out of this looking like a million bucks, somehow. (At least I think he does. I really had a hard time envisioning the ending.)
If this is part of the story, if this is part of the healer's magic, or the Savior's magic, fine. But then state that. Explain it. Make Tobias not just grateful and mildly surprised that his wounds felt so much better, but actually amazed at how quickly he was healing. Have him observe his body and see the difference in an explicit way. And if it is amazing, have him say something to the healer about it, ask about how it's even possible. Have him immediately wonder if this could help his sister (who becomes a bit of an afterthought as the book progresses). That should all be part of the world-building. This is fantasy, with magic, and I get that. But there needs to be a point of comparison, an established baseline, to be able to actually understand the magic in action. Instead, I felt like I was expected to do a lot of extrapolation, and when a book is 173,000 words, that is the last thing I should have to do.
The last thing I want to say is that this is supposed to be an adult book, but the mark of an adult book isn't just blood and gore and violence and profanity and sex. It's depth. Depth of character, depth of emotion, depth of plot, depth of world-building. An adult lens is supposed to see deeper than, say, a YA lens, because it's drawing on an adult's range of life experience, which invariably makes a POV more nuanced, more complex. This book did not have that depth. I felt like it treated adult themes with a YA lens, and that just did not work for me.
I am sad that this is my reaction to this book. I like Jenna Moreci, and I know she works very hard. What she has managed to achieve as an indie author is undeniably impressive and I respect her accomplishments. But this book was a disappointment. There was just no pay-off to all the anticipation.
This review will be long, because I have a lot to say. In fact, I unearthed my long-lost goodreads login info to post this, because the other reviews here genuinely baffle me. I like and respect Jenna Moreci, and have been following her YouTube channel and social media for a couple years now. She is a knowledgeable indie author who very clearly works her ass off, who has done a phenomenal job establishing herself and helping other people, and who created a very intriguing story that I was really looking forward to reading. But the result was incredibly disappointing.
TL;DR: This is like a bloody, brutal version of the Bachelorette that is at least 73K words too long and yet lacks any real depth in world-building, character development, or plot, with a lacklustre romance at its heart. It also felt like less of an adult book, and more like a book exploring adult themes through a YA lens.
Maybe because I was so excited for it to finally come out, because I liked the premise and read the reviews on goodreads and watched the YT reviews from booktubers I respect and whose points of view I value, and was expecting something mind-blowing, something amazing. Maybe my expectations were too high, but look at the reviews! Look at all the hype! So many people saying such good things! Maybe I'm missing something, but this did not deliver on all the promises it and a lot of the reviewers made.
First of all, this novel is 173,000 words -- 173K! -- and yet in all that word count there is hardly any world-building, and what magic there is is poorly explained and superficial. I don't subscribe to the idea that magic has to have a system or rules, but this is supposed to be fantasy with magic, so I would have expected the magic to play a more prominent -- or at least a more obvious -- role than it did outside of the tournament. There were a few instances where something in the book didn't make sense even from the protagonist's perspective, but he just brushed it off, assuming that it was just all done by magic and accepting everything as it was. The most interesting display of magic by far was But we got no real sense of how the existence of magic shaped this world, or how it worked, how it was doled out or used by the Savior, etc. Sometimes things just happened, and voilà -- magic!
This book could -- I would even venture to say should -- have been 73,000 words shorter. There were so many scenes that could have been cut, especially where the dialogue just went on and on and on without a whole lot being said, without very much being developed. The romance between the two principal characters felt very sanitized given the rest of the book's vulgarity and extreme brutality. This was supposed to have steamy romance. It didn't feel steamy. Everything was very subdued. There were a lot of conversations between Tobias and his love interest, and they just dragged. The significance of each conversation and how it contributed to making the characters fall deeper and deeper in love was unclear, because we rarely got insight into how what said or did affected him, let alone why. Not until, at one point, he just realized he was in love with her. Just like that -- poof! And conveniently, she was in love with him, too! And they were choosing each other! How very sweet!
Except it didn't feel sweet. Aside from an initial misunderstanding between the two of them, there was no real tension between them, no build-up, no feeling that what they had was anything out of the ordinary. Aside from the circumstances foisted upon them by the tournament, of course, but even all of that felt so unreal, so contrived. There were gaping plot holes and a lack of in-story logic. Like others have said,
Also, There are so many lapses like this, and I found it really frustrating. It didn't help that the tournament just dragged on and on.
I didn't care about Tobias, hardly got a sense of who he was. Leila was more interesting, but not significantly. I didn't understand Oh, and Tobias's best friend, Milo -- This was a problem with a lot of the characters. I didn't care about any of them except Enzo and Orion, because they had the most interesting stories. Even Delphi and Pippa, crowd favourites, didn't do much for me, though I recognize the intention behind them.
Oh, on the subject of characters,
A lot of the reviewers mentioned amazing twists and turns. I saw none. Everything was predictable, very trope-y, so many of the characters were just caricatures, and nothing in the end came as a shock. Except the ending itself, which felt very rushed and dropped off abruptly, in a far too obvious attempt at a hook. After 173K words, the one thing that really shouldn't have been rushed was the ending, and yet it just...ended. There were so many questions left unanswered. Like, I was really bitter about the ending. There was so much lead-up, so much promise of everything being explained and unravelled in the end. And it just didn't happen.
Then there's the gratuitous violence and profanity. I don't care about the profanity, because that's what was promised, although my main issue was that it -- along with the rest of the language -- clashed with the image I had of the world, however faltering. It just seemed a little ridiculous how much of the language in this Ancient Greece-based fantasy world sounded like it belonged to a potty-mouthed American teenager. Oh, and the "Apologies". The constant repetition of "Apologies" really grated on my nerves. It was clearly an attempt to try to show that the society was more formal, or somehow different from the world we live in, but it didn't work very well. Not when the main female characters say things like, "Oh, you're so bad!" and "You sneaky bitch!" (said in a loving way). But whatever. This IS fantasy, after all. I can let that slide if the rest of it works.
But the violence? By the end of the book, Tobias should have been a walking scab. The poor guy was ripped into and beaten at every turn. A lot of authors seem to not understand how long it takes for injuries to heal, even if they're just bruises, but the injuries inflicted on these characters were insane, with a fresh top-up every single day. Add to that a torture scene, And all of this within the space of 30 days, the bulk of it in even shorter bursts of time. I think it's supposed to be implied that the contestants -- Tobias in particular -- heal much more quickly than is normal because of the healer, but this isn't clearly addressed. Just how quickly is he healing, and how well? Is it overnight? Does he become good as new? Or are there lingering effects (which, in most cases, it seemed like there were)? How significant were these effects, how long did they linger, and so on? Plus, even healed there will be a long-term effect, like scarring or mutilation. There IS a character who scars himself on purpose, after all. But Tobias comes out of this looking like a million bucks, somehow. (At least I think he does. I really had a hard time envisioning the ending.)
If this is part of the story, if this is part of the healer's magic, or the Savior's magic, fine. But then state that. Explain it. Make Tobias not just grateful and mildly surprised that his wounds felt so much better, but actually amazed at how quickly he was healing. Have him observe his body and see the difference in an explicit way. And if it is amazing, have him say something to the healer about it, ask about how it's even possible. Have him immediately wonder if this could help his sister (who becomes a bit of an afterthought as the book progresses). That should all be part of the world-building. This is fantasy, with magic, and I get that. But there needs to be a point of comparison, an established baseline, to be able to actually understand the magic in action. Instead, I felt like I was expected to do a lot of extrapolation, and when a book is 173,000 words, that is the last thing I should have to do.
The last thing I want to say is that this is supposed to be an adult book, but the mark of an adult book isn't just blood and gore and violence and profanity and sex. It's depth. Depth of character, depth of emotion, depth of plot, depth of world-building. An adult lens is supposed to see deeper than, say, a YA lens, because it's drawing on an adult's range of life experience, which invariably makes a POV more nuanced, more complex. This book did not have that depth. I felt like it treated adult themes with a YA lens, and that just did not work for me.
I am sad that this is my reaction to this book. I like Jenna Moreci, and I know she works very hard. What she has managed to achieve as an indie author is undeniably impressive and I respect her accomplishments. But this book was a disappointment. There was just no pay-off to all the anticipation.
January 30, 2025
For all the issues I had with "Eve: The Awakening," I really thought this book would be an improvement. I recall genuinely perking at the sample pieces, thinking it was already a massive improvement in terms of writing. I also felt that many of the issues I had with "Eve" would be much more fitting in this ancient fantasy setting (the over-the-top bigotry, the juvenile characters and stereotypes, the slow pacing...)
Then the book came out, and I looked at the title of the prologue:
"The Beginning."
This ain't gonna be a long review, as I didn't finish the book. I'll just give a short list of the pros and cons.
The Good:
1.) There was an editor this time. And from the improved pacing, not just a proof-reader, but an actual editor.
2.) No creepy victimization fantasies this time around
3.) As with "Eve," the names are diverse and unique. Some have complained about how random they seem, but I don't mind that. The setting is diverse enough in skin tones that I can assume that the setting is a bit of a cultural melting pot. I don't mind the lack of world-building too much either; I just sort of pictured this all in a whimsical fantasy land, like "Ella Enchanted" or the Brandy version of "Cinderella."
4.) No obviously toxic romance. I can't comment on how "healthy" Leila and Toejam or whatever his name is did their romance, as I didn't finish the book, but at least it was nothing "Twilight"-esque.
5.) Some laugh-out-loud comedy. For instance, the opening death scene, which describes torrents of blood pouring from a wide, grinning slit through, immediately followed by someone noting, "She's bleeding!" From there, the deaths just get more hysterical. If you've ever seen "Meet the Feebles" or "The Happytime Murders," it's kind of like that. This book, like "Eve," is set in a universe where humans are walking blood balloons eager to pop for your gory entertainment. And then there's the abrupt inferno death, which was so over-the-top and left-field, I giggled out loud in the work break room.
Cons
1.) I may be wrong, but I think those hilarious scenes I mentioned above were actually meant to be serious. But the characters were so flat, I didn't care about any of their deaths. Even the main character didn't react much when his best friend got "Indiana Jones"-ed. The bully had to literally remind Tobias to be upset that his BFF was dead, and Tobias would be mad, vaguely, and then forget about it again. The over-the-top nature of the deaths doesn't help me take them more seriously.
2.) The characters are overall even flatter than in "Eve." To be fair, "Eve" didn't gain most of it's fun characters until the second half, so maybe the same is true with this book. But it really shouldn't take half the book for the reader to start caring. That said, I am not the book's target audience, I understand it's aimed at a much younger crowd, and if they enjoy it then awesome.
3.) Visually empty. The only thing the author describes in much detail are the characters. Which is good--it's good for the author to care about her characters, at least enough to tell us what they look like. But for a fantasy story, how about some hint of what the world they live in looks like? I don't think this would require too much world-building. What do the buildings look like? Is the city full of white buildings with curled columns, or blockish colorful pyramids, or what? Maybe this gets more description later in the book, but I doubt it, as I understand most of the action takes place in the "labyrinth."
4.) Bland swearing. I'm fine with unrealistically excessive swearing... if it's supposed to be over-the-top. In which case, it shouldn't just be the same "bad" words over and over, but creative, comical concoctions of vulgarity. This could've been like "Your Highness," with sword-wielding heroes bellowing hilariously poetic profanities. But the swearing wasn't funny, nor did it create any believable tension. This book could've been a nice dramedy love story, between a hero who fears that no one gives two turtle shits about his family, and a healer who can feel their love burning in her beaver. Instead, it felt like a generic YA romance, with as many "fucks" and "cunts" crammed in as possible, as if just one or two a chapter wouldn't be enough to make the young target audience feel they were reading something edgy and "adult."
5.) The "twist" ending meets Paolini levels of obvious. (No I didn't finish the book, but the "twist" is now common knowledge as much as Edward turning out to be a vampire.)
6.) Same FakeSpot results, same issue of reviews that reek of woolly fabric and plastic googly-eyes.
7.) The chapter titles. Chapters don't need titles. And prologues definitely don't need titles. I personally like titled chapters, but only if it's an actual title. If the author was so instant that her prologue have a title, would it have been too much effort to at least snag a cliche like "A New Dawn" or "A Death and a Birth"? Did the author really think she needed to clarify that the opening segment was "the Beginning?"
I had to wonder what the last chapter would be called. "The End?" "The Conclusion?" "The Sequel Hook?" I scrolled curiously, hoping against hope that at least, at least, it would be a title, if a wall-banginly clinched one. "Resolutions." "Going Home." "Making Amends." "Sundown."
Just please, please, don't be called "The End."
Down I scroll, and find the final chapter title:
"The New Beginning."
If this is just the author's formula for her books, that is 100% her prerogative. And if her fans enjoy them, that is a good thing. Her books aren't for me, but they were never meant to be. I am not in the target age group.
On a final note, I feel I should say that whatever I think of this author and her books, she has an overall very kind and gentle fanbase. I do not recall seeing negative sentiments met with much hostility, save a few flying monkeys who are obviously very close with the author. In terms of the actual fanbase though, the young viewers of the YouTube channel, I have not seen any overzealous fans from that group ever attack someone for disliking or criticizing the book or YouTube channel. Something you may have to be a Trekkie or MCU fan to really appreciate.
Then the book came out, and I looked at the title of the prologue:
"The Beginning."
This ain't gonna be a long review, as I didn't finish the book. I'll just give a short list of the pros and cons.
The Good:
1.) There was an editor this time. And from the improved pacing, not just a proof-reader, but an actual editor.
2.) No creepy victimization fantasies this time around
3.) As with "Eve," the names are diverse and unique. Some have complained about how random they seem, but I don't mind that. The setting is diverse enough in skin tones that I can assume that the setting is a bit of a cultural melting pot. I don't mind the lack of world-building too much either; I just sort of pictured this all in a whimsical fantasy land, like "Ella Enchanted" or the Brandy version of "Cinderella."
4.) No obviously toxic romance. I can't comment on how "healthy" Leila and Toejam or whatever his name is did their romance, as I didn't finish the book, but at least it was nothing "Twilight"-esque.
5.) Some laugh-out-loud comedy. For instance, the opening death scene, which describes torrents of blood pouring from a wide, grinning slit through, immediately followed by someone noting, "She's bleeding!" From there, the deaths just get more hysterical. If you've ever seen "Meet the Feebles" or "The Happytime Murders," it's kind of like that. This book, like "Eve," is set in a universe where humans are walking blood balloons eager to pop for your gory entertainment. And then there's the abrupt inferno death, which was so over-the-top and left-field, I giggled out loud in the work break room.
Cons
1.) I may be wrong, but I think those hilarious scenes I mentioned above were actually meant to be serious. But the characters were so flat, I didn't care about any of their deaths. Even the main character didn't react much when his best friend got "Indiana Jones"-ed. The bully had to literally remind Tobias to be upset that his BFF was dead, and Tobias would be mad, vaguely, and then forget about it again. The over-the-top nature of the deaths doesn't help me take them more seriously.
2.) The characters are overall even flatter than in "Eve." To be fair, "Eve" didn't gain most of it's fun characters until the second half, so maybe the same is true with this book. But it really shouldn't take half the book for the reader to start caring. That said, I am not the book's target audience, I understand it's aimed at a much younger crowd, and if they enjoy it then awesome.
3.) Visually empty. The only thing the author describes in much detail are the characters. Which is good--it's good for the author to care about her characters, at least enough to tell us what they look like. But for a fantasy story, how about some hint of what the world they live in looks like? I don't think this would require too much world-building. What do the buildings look like? Is the city full of white buildings with curled columns, or blockish colorful pyramids, or what? Maybe this gets more description later in the book, but I doubt it, as I understand most of the action takes place in the "labyrinth."
4.) Bland swearing. I'm fine with unrealistically excessive swearing... if it's supposed to be over-the-top. In which case, it shouldn't just be the same "bad" words over and over, but creative, comical concoctions of vulgarity. This could've been like "Your Highness," with sword-wielding heroes bellowing hilariously poetic profanities. But the swearing wasn't funny, nor did it create any believable tension. This book could've been a nice dramedy love story, between a hero who fears that no one gives two turtle shits about his family, and a healer who can feel their love burning in her beaver. Instead, it felt like a generic YA romance, with as many "fucks" and "cunts" crammed in as possible, as if just one or two a chapter wouldn't be enough to make the young target audience feel they were reading something edgy and "adult."
5.) The "twist" ending meets Paolini levels of obvious. (No I didn't finish the book, but the "twist" is now common knowledge as much as Edward turning out to be a vampire.)
6.) Same FakeSpot results, same issue of reviews that reek of woolly fabric and plastic googly-eyes.
7.) The chapter titles. Chapters don't need titles. And prologues definitely don't need titles. I personally like titled chapters, but only if it's an actual title. If the author was so instant that her prologue have a title, would it have been too much effort to at least snag a cliche like "A New Dawn" or "A Death and a Birth"? Did the author really think she needed to clarify that the opening segment was "the Beginning?"
I had to wonder what the last chapter would be called. "The End?" "The Conclusion?" "The Sequel Hook?" I scrolled curiously, hoping against hope that at least, at least, it would be a title, if a wall-banginly clinched one. "Resolutions." "Going Home." "Making Amends." "Sundown."
Just please, please, don't be called "The End."
Down I scroll, and find the final chapter title:
"The New Beginning."
If this is just the author's formula for her books, that is 100% her prerogative. And if her fans enjoy them, that is a good thing. Her books aren't for me, but they were never meant to be. I am not in the target age group.
On a final note, I feel I should say that whatever I think of this author and her books, she has an overall very kind and gentle fanbase. I do not recall seeing negative sentiments met with much hostility, save a few flying monkeys who are obviously very close with the author. In terms of the actual fanbase though, the young viewers of the YouTube channel, I have not seen any overzealous fans from that group ever attack someone for disliking or criticizing the book or YouTube channel. Something you may have to be a Trekkie or MCU fan to really appreciate.
October 3, 2021
January 23, 2019 - December 21, 2019
As you can see, it took me almost a year, but that's my fault. What can I say? I am intimidated by big books. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
But even if I didn't pick it up for months, I always remembered every detail vividly, I didn't need to start it all over again. Even now, a year later, I can rememer everything. Maybe it has to do a little with my method (or maybe Jenna is just a very good writer), because there were so much characters (with 2 names - one is their own and one is their title) I needed to color code them by their teams/categories and cross out the names of those who died and underlined those who killed them. I even numbered in what order they died. So yeah, I had a fun time with this book. My physical copy looks so cute with the underlined and circled, colored names. Even if it means they were murdured. Oh well.
My review will probably be all over the place, so sorry.
I actulally figured out the main twist at the beginning, but I wasn't 100% sure, so the whole time I was in that blessed state of questioning.
Thobias's development was AMAZING. I literally felt his anger, his bitterness, and his mental breakdown close to the end was so well written, so believable, I had my own, too.
Each challenge was really interesting, and although I knew Thobias won't die (at least not till the end) since he is the main character, I feared for the others. I'm still bitter about some of their deaths.
My favourite characters were Orion and the holy trinity: Leila, Delphi and Pippa. I even liked Kaleo. Not as a person of course, but he was just as interesting as annoying, .
I know I said all the time that Leila is my queen, the love of my life and I want to marry her, but I would be more than ok with sexysmartfantasticamazing Delphi or my sweet, naive, loyal Pippa. And just for all of you to know, if Pippa is in danger and you are there and don't protect her even with your life, I'll come for you and you better run!
Please watch this video about the characters, I can guarantee, you will want to read the book. It's hilarious. And if you watch it after you read the book, it's even funnier.
Thobias and Leila are such a power couple! They are strong individuals and so sassy, funny and romantic together, I laughed so much when they were just themeselves.
As you can see, it took me almost a year, but that's my fault. What can I say? I am intimidated by big books. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
But even if I didn't pick it up for months, I always remembered every detail vividly, I didn't need to start it all over again. Even now, a year later, I can rememer everything. Maybe it has to do a little with my method (or maybe Jenna is just a very good writer), because there were so much characters (with 2 names - one is their own and one is their title) I needed to color code them by their teams/categories and cross out the names of those who died and underlined those who killed them. I even numbered in what order they died. So yeah, I had a fun time with this book. My physical copy looks so cute with the underlined and circled, colored names. Even if it means they were murdured. Oh well.
My review will probably be all over the place, so sorry.
I actulally figured out the main twist at the beginning, but I wasn't 100% sure, so the whole time I was in that blessed state of questioning.
Thobias's development was AMAZING. I literally felt his anger, his bitterness, and his mental breakdown close to the end was so well written, so believable, I had my own, too.
Each challenge was really interesting, and although I knew Thobias won't die (at least not till the end) since he is the main character, I feared for the others. I'm still bitter about some of their deaths.
My favourite characters were Orion and the holy trinity: Leila, Delphi and Pippa. I even liked Kaleo. Not as a person of course, but he was just as interesting as annoying, .
I know I said all the time that Leila is my queen, the love of my life and I want to marry her, but I would be more than ok with sexysmartfantasticamazing Delphi or my sweet, naive, loyal Pippa. And just for all of you to know, if Pippa is in danger and you are there and don't protect her even with your life, I'll come for you and you better run!
Please watch this video about the characters, I can guarantee, you will want to read the book. It's hilarious. And if you watch it after you read the book, it's even funnier.
Thobias and Leila are such a power couple! They are strong individuals and so sassy, funny and romantic together, I laughed so much when they were just themeselves.
December 26, 2018
TSC is the better book compared to Moreci's debut novel “Eve: the awakening”, I’ll give it that. And boy I had hope, everything about it seems right up my alley and wanted to give it a chance. Now I have A LOT to say, unfortunately very little is positive, but I’ll try to justify all my issues the best I can. This will be long, with lots of spoilers.
Writing:
The writing was so awkward… it’s generic purple prose and has zero voice. Tobias's thoughts are sometimes conveyed through the narrative, other times they’re in first person and italic. The dialogue wants to be formal and edgy and modern and historical all at once. The inconsistencies are jarring and the italics are again so overused. There are a lot of useless adverbs, cliche and weak sentences, passive voice and redundant, vague descriptions, such as:
"The people decided She needed authority, and so She has crowned the Ruler of Thiessen, making Her will law. Wars ended, evil went punished, and peace resided after years of chaos. In the shortest amount of time, the realm had surpassed its original greatness, and it was all at the hands of a little Girl.”
This is not only info-dumpy but vague. They who? Some who? So all the people accepted this new magical queen after she fixed everything? This vague kind of description carries on through the whole book and leaves the reader with more questions than answers.
Overused things that got on my nerves:
Phrasings like “went rigid” “went tight” “went dry” and so on.
“Apologies”. This one pissed off a lot of people, with reason.
The “God” related stuff, when we don't even know who or what this God is.
“Only slightly.”
Leila swatting Tobias’ arm.
“Cunt” and “cock”.
“Seconds passed like hours.”
“Cocked his/her head.”
World:
The little world building we’re given is sketchy at best. Thessen was in chaos (not much else is said about how it was before), then some sort of God (?) birthed a magic girl (a baby!) that fixed everything… somehow. Magic, I think. And she glows under the sun, because of reasons, and she’s beautiful, so people made her queen. And she can only have one daughter because... magic… so if one of the daughters had ever died before birthing the next (like it almost happens in the prologue) the whole lineage is basically screwed... and they need a violent gladiator-like competition to secure the “best” sperm for the next savior, and people just roll with it forever I guess…
That’s about all we get. There's no solid view of the landscape, the food, the cultural practices, the magic. The magic is just kinda there, arbitrarily and plot-serving. Where’s the religious system? How do people honor the Savior? What are the rituals? There’s a prayer and some phrases thrown around and that’s it. What’s the class system? It’s a monarchy, but how’s the rest? Is there a middle class? Aristocracy? Tobias is a peasant apparently, but where are all the others? How’s the realm even organized? We’re a given a fortress and a village, but are there districts? Independent towns? Is it feudal? How are they ruled? What are the laws and how they’re enforced? What’s the economy like? Do the other realms also share of the same beliefs? What the neighboring realms are like? I’m not kidding, nothing is explained.
I don’t care if any of this is answered somewhere other than this book. I know the author uses her platforms to interact with her followers and answer their questions and that’s fine, but the book has to speak for itself. Not everyone wants to rely on social media because the author didn’t bother to write stuff in the damn book instead.
Characters:
They were the worst part of this book to me. Tobias is bland, a bit of a Gary Stu, whiny, stupid, and immature. This might sound harsh because next to the other characters, (the males ones notoriously) he almost seems like someone worth rooting for. This speaks volumes for the quality of the supporting cast.
He doesn’t do anything. After entering the tournament, he hardly makes any important decision out of his own will, he mostly reacts to the challenges and other situations thrown at him. He gets moody just because others are happy, dislikes people on sight without good reason and he’s never wrong, all of them “deserve” to be disliked (his love interest is the only exception). His sourness carries on for long makes him so hard to root for. At least at first, his reasons are somewhat understandable, but it’s not a pleasant read.
Tobias’ motivation is written in the most cliche way possible. He enters the tournament for his family. He works hard and earns little, his sister Naomi is paralyzed and suffers from intense pain. If he enters, his family immediately receives a lot of money. But Naomi is only a plot device, she exists to be Tobias's noble reason to enter. Do I need to explain the problem when a woman's only role is to motivate the male protagonist? Tobias doesn't want to enter, yet he changes his mind just in time because Naomi conveniently has a horrible pain crisis. I think it's a bit ridiculous how much the whole “I'm not going to enter.” drama is stressed when we know he is going to enter anyway. It just made it come across as an impulsive and idiotic decision.
“It’s clear, really. You’re alive because I need you."
Tobias’ words to his sister. This is meant to be sweet and loving, but really? There was no other way to convey it?
It’s said, repeatedly, that he’s good (just because) and his goodness will be tested throughout the book. His name conveniently means “goodness”. But Jenna obviously doesn’t trust her readers to get it, throwing around things like “what have you become”, “you’re a changed man”, “he was more beast than man now” “you'll choose darkness.” and so on. But we never see it. All the times he did something “bad”, he (1) “had no choice”, and that’s not interesting. Characters should have a choice and suffer the consequences for it. (2) The people affected were always the one-dimensional antagonists, so they deserved it. Tobias admits to himself all of them had it coming and that he feels no regret.
His “bad” doings hardly weight much on him. He kills and sees men dying horrible deaths, he beheads a man at the end and he's all up for kissing sections with his love interest afterward. Witnessing and inflicting so much violence should be extremely traumatizing for someone “good” like him. By the end of the book, he should be broken to shreds, but he feels pretty much the same.
So, he’s supposed to be an artist, it’s even his laurel… I didn’t buy that. I’m an artist myself, so maybe this got me especially annoyed. Art was rarely brought up and he didn’t act like he cared all that much about it. And that would have been fine if we weren't constantly told how art was his life passion. In one of the challenges, the men need to make a tribute to the Savior, so Tobias decides to make a portrait of Cosima, except he can’t. He makes portraits of Leila over and over again, unable to stop himself. Then he’s out of canvas, loses the challenge and puts a target on his back.
But How can he not realize what he was drawing?? And how is he so unable to just draw what he wants? His life is on the table here. Can people please stop portraying art like this mystical gift that springs out of our hands? It’s a craft, based on skill, and it doesn’t work like that! We have full control over what we are doing. He's suddenly so in love that he loses all of his wits and is unable to control his own damn hand? He’d known the girl for like a week at this point. That was so absurd I gave up on trying to take this novel seriously.
The author tries so hard to paint him like a hero, he’s literally saving people all the time. We're frequently reminded that he's handsome, even all the other men think so. His attempts to be charming are cringey and unintentionally funny, but harmless most of the time, except:
“Intimidating? Well, I suppose I can see it. You’re confident, intelligent, not to mention very beautiful. It’s a formidable combination. It’s certainly easier on the ego to pursue a lesser woman.”
That's how he flatters his girlfriend, by putting her above other women. I’d love to know what is a lesser woman. If a woman is not “beautiful”, or “intelligent” she’s automatically lesser? Fuck him, really. (and Jenna calls herself a feminist *sigh*)
And Leila... she’s as much unlikable as Tobias. She’s flawlessly beautiful (in the most cookie-cutter way possible) and petite and dainty and soft, but she’s a skilled fighter too (because who needs strong muscles to be a fighter), and she’s snarky and takes no man’s shit. She stabs them. She’s smarter than all of them. Anyone who doesn’t like her is just intimidated by how beautiful and awesome she is. And she is actually the real Savior trying to discover who her father assigned to murder her. That’s the big plot twist.
*eye roll*
There’s absolutely nothing wrong about making a character beautiful, but stop shoving down our throats how beautiful and perfect they are. Please, stop it. We don’t need to read Tobias drooling over Leila for a dozen paragraphs. Every time he sees her, he goes on and on about her beauty and the boner she gives him, I swear If it was a drinking game someone would die of alcohol poisoning.
Leila is also meant to be bold and honest, but she’s just obnoxious. And a hypocrite, it's not even a legit character flaw, it's inconsistent characterization. She often rants about the goriness and violence of the tournament and how the men are dehumanized. She wants to end it. Yet, when she’s crossed, she stabs people, she commits cold-blooded murder by throwing a guy off a cliff, she assassinated her father’s senators, she gives a weapon so Tobias and the other men can kill another competitor. Again, I guess it’s okay because the men targeted are flat murderers and sexual assaulters? But don't try to paint her like this morally superior being who preaches against the bloodbath. She sounds a lot like the ultra-conservative people in my country who are “pro-life” but defend things like “a good criminal is a dead criminal”.
"Pippa—she’s darling, isn’t she? My little duckling, following me wherever I go."
Pippa is a court girl and has a developmental delay. Again, I know this was supposed to be endearing, but to me Leila is saying that Pippa is her little loyal pet and that’s just disgusting. Pippa is severely infantilized as this clueless ray of sunshine amid all the violence. Like Naomi, she's helpless. They need the noble MCs to rescue and protect them from everything. Why treat characters with disabilities so poorly?
But most of the supporting cast was as much useless. All the villains are flat caricatures, not one had a convincing motivation, if any motivation. Cosima resembled a less over the top version of Madison from EVE and it bothers me that Jenna has a tendency to depict the “hot” big-breasted women as treacherous and/or “sexually promiscuous”. Flynn was just annoying and 90% of his role was to make crude sexual remarks in every dialogue so I don't understand his purpose. Everyone else was more of a blur.
There’s diversity, but it wasn’t done well. And I have to rely on the characters portraits on the author’s website because their descriptions are either forgettable or their ethnicities are never clear in the first place.
So… why the most powerful, beautiful, divine and good being of this world ALWAYS has to be the whitest of all the white? I’m not talking about any magical aspect and how they’re filled with white light (which is also so convenient). Leila and Cosima are overly exalted for their beauty, fairness and milky skin, all the time. As if this is weren’t problematic enough, the non-white characters are given such poor treatment. The two Asian men are one dimensional and villainized, one is even brutally murdered by Leila. Raphael, the super smart black guy, is never shown to be smart, or at least not smarter than most of the other men, especially Tobias. God forbid a secondary character being smarter than your protagonist. Delphi’s personality was nice, but her role revolved too much around Leila for my taste and she ends up as just the black best friend. The others were killed off or not important at all. This left such a bitter taste, like the author just wants the marketability of diversity but is not interested to know what can be harmful to portray. There is not one POC in this novel that is a well-rounded and truly good representation and not constantly overshadowed by the white MCs.
Romance:
Tobias and Leila get too intense too fast. The build-up is extremely rushed and unsubtle and we are always told everything that’s happening. Their moments together drag, their conversations are cheesy and everything is so right in your face. When Tobias is thinking of her, it often goes like “I’m thinking of Leila, she’s so beautiful and cool, I got a boner. Stop it I'm here for Cosima. Oops, thought of Leila again.” I’m not even paraphrasing by much.
There is a trend in their relationship. They argue, Leila refuses to talk about it, Tobias does something incredibly stupid, potentially deadly, to get a chance to mend things, they argue some more and end up face-sucking each other. All their conflicts come from miscommunication, and their arguments are painful to read. If they acted like adults, or at least weren’t conveniently interrupted all the time, this book would have been so much shorter.
I didn’t find them to be that healthy. I liked that consent was explicitly stated on both sides and that they were usually nice to each other, but I still have qualms about their many dumb misunderstandings and communication issues and fights since so little time has passed. Leila becomes overly jealous for no reason and Tobias is willing to put his life at risk to appease her. She even shouts at him “go fuck yourself” in the end and not in a playful way. If you are this aggressive with your partner and this soon, it’s a red flag.
I never get why they fall so desperately in love. They were just treating each other with civility. It might seem like a big deal when most of the characters are treating them like crap, but it was so out of the blue. There was so much lust involved that I doubt Tobias would have fallen for her if she wasn’t "so goddamn beautiful".
Also, thirty days? I know it’s enough time for someone to fall in love, but that is NOT the same thing as “I love you forever and ever, we’ll spend the rest of our lives together, lets get married right now and I’ll and take care of you even in the afterlife”. If the characters feel like this so soon, I’m just gonna think they’re emotionally immature. Love - mature, abiding love - takes time to grow no matter the circumstances. Tobias and Leila are proclaiming their undying love after knowing each other for barely a month and I didn’t buy it.
Plot:
Why was this tournament the best idea to secure a strong bloodline for the saviors? Why is it still the best idea? The challenges didn’t serve any purposes. Survival depended more on luck than anything else, otherwise Tobias wouldn’t have made through the first days. He's only alive because he's blessed with magical help several times, it's not even his own merit.
No set of rules is established, they conveniently appear out of thin air to create some cheap tension. If the men can inconsequentially kill one another, why don’t they just do it? If it’s a show mainly for the masses, why so little of it is outside the tunnel or the palace? Why call it a labyrinth when it’s a tunnel? (I don’t care if it was a labyrinth before) and if you’re calling it a labyrinth why not make it a damn labyrinth?
Isn’t there anyone supervising the tournament? Even the palace officials can randomly kill without punishment. Brontes rarely bothered to check what was going on, how his plan was unfolding, so Leila could carry on her own plan. His whole scheme, (to get one of the beats to murder his daughter and get the crown to himself) is never explained. Why didn’t he go for the more obvious and easier alternatives? Why was he even doing it? He’s the main villain and we know nothing about his motivations. They weren’t the kind of questions that left me on the edge for the next book, they were frustrating.
After the first three chapters, the pacing goes as fast as a dead slug. Most of the challenges were essentially action filler scenes and added nothing to the story or characters. The whole plot was formulaic and predictable, I was never surprised and I expected to be with all the hype, but the plot twists are treated with the subtlety of a stampede of wild rhinoceroses.
I’ve hinted this before, but this story is so manipulative. Tobias might look like this “great” guy because the majority of the men are plain trash, and Leila seems so badass and perfect because other women are either bitchy or background noise. Their romance seems so amazing and healthy because they are the only ones being nice to each other for a decent amount of page time.
And to conclude, this isn’t even an adult novel. There’s more to the definition than gore, gratuitous nudity, and over the top swearing. It does not have the proper voice (or any voice) and everything is so shallow. It’s some generic YA book trying too hard to be grown up. The violence was only there for shock value. If I didn’t know any better I’d think that love, and especially sex, were written by a giggling pre-adolescent.
Overall this book is vulgar, needlessly graphic, immature, formulaic and shallow despite being over 170k words long. Its attempts to be profound are hilarious. It doesn’t work even as “mindless” entertainment, it’s so poorly done it wasn't even fun.
Writing:
The writing was so awkward… it’s generic purple prose and has zero voice. Tobias's thoughts are sometimes conveyed through the narrative, other times they’re in first person and italic. The dialogue wants to be formal and edgy and modern and historical all at once. The inconsistencies are jarring and the italics are again so overused. There are a lot of useless adverbs, cliche and weak sentences, passive voice and redundant, vague descriptions, such as:
"The people decided She needed authority, and so She has crowned the Ruler of Thiessen, making Her will law. Wars ended, evil went punished, and peace resided after years of chaos. In the shortest amount of time, the realm had surpassed its original greatness, and it was all at the hands of a little Girl.”
This is not only info-dumpy but vague. They who? Some who? So all the people accepted this new magical queen after she fixed everything? This vague kind of description carries on through the whole book and leaves the reader with more questions than answers.
Overused things that got on my nerves:
Phrasings like “went rigid” “went tight” “went dry” and so on.
“Apologies”. This one pissed off a lot of people, with reason.
The “God” related stuff, when we don't even know who or what this God is.
“Only slightly.”
Leila swatting Tobias’ arm.
“Cunt” and “cock”.
“Seconds passed like hours.”
“Cocked his/her head.”
World:
The little world building we’re given is sketchy at best. Thessen was in chaos (not much else is said about how it was before), then some sort of God (?) birthed a magic girl (a baby!) that fixed everything… somehow. Magic, I think. And she glows under the sun, because of reasons, and she’s beautiful, so people made her queen. And she can only have one daughter because... magic… so if one of the daughters had ever died before birthing the next (like it almost happens in the prologue) the whole lineage is basically screwed... and they need a violent gladiator-like competition to secure the “best” sperm for the next savior, and people just roll with it forever I guess…
That’s about all we get. There's no solid view of the landscape, the food, the cultural practices, the magic. The magic is just kinda there, arbitrarily and plot-serving. Where’s the religious system? How do people honor the Savior? What are the rituals? There’s a prayer and some phrases thrown around and that’s it. What’s the class system? It’s a monarchy, but how’s the rest? Is there a middle class? Aristocracy? Tobias is a peasant apparently, but where are all the others? How’s the realm even organized? We’re a given a fortress and a village, but are there districts? Independent towns? Is it feudal? How are they ruled? What are the laws and how they’re enforced? What’s the economy like? Do the other realms also share of the same beliefs? What the neighboring realms are like? I’m not kidding, nothing is explained.
I don’t care if any of this is answered somewhere other than this book. I know the author uses her platforms to interact with her followers and answer their questions and that’s fine, but the book has to speak for itself. Not everyone wants to rely on social media because the author didn’t bother to write stuff in the damn book instead.
Characters:
They were the worst part of this book to me. Tobias is bland, a bit of a Gary Stu, whiny, stupid, and immature. This might sound harsh because next to the other characters, (the males ones notoriously) he almost seems like someone worth rooting for. This speaks volumes for the quality of the supporting cast.
He doesn’t do anything. After entering the tournament, he hardly makes any important decision out of his own will, he mostly reacts to the challenges and other situations thrown at him. He gets moody just because others are happy, dislikes people on sight without good reason and he’s never wrong, all of them “deserve” to be disliked (his love interest is the only exception). His sourness carries on for long makes him so hard to root for. At least at first, his reasons are somewhat understandable, but it’s not a pleasant read.
Tobias’ motivation is written in the most cliche way possible. He enters the tournament for his family. He works hard and earns little, his sister Naomi is paralyzed and suffers from intense pain. If he enters, his family immediately receives a lot of money. But Naomi is only a plot device, she exists to be Tobias's noble reason to enter. Do I need to explain the problem when a woman's only role is to motivate the male protagonist? Tobias doesn't want to enter, yet he changes his mind just in time because Naomi conveniently has a horrible pain crisis. I think it's a bit ridiculous how much the whole “I'm not going to enter.” drama is stressed when we know he is going to enter anyway. It just made it come across as an impulsive and idiotic decision.
“It’s clear, really. You’re alive because I need you."
Tobias’ words to his sister. This is meant to be sweet and loving, but really? There was no other way to convey it?
It’s said, repeatedly, that he’s good (just because) and his goodness will be tested throughout the book. His name conveniently means “goodness”. But Jenna obviously doesn’t trust her readers to get it, throwing around things like “what have you become”, “you’re a changed man”, “he was more beast than man now” “you'll choose darkness.” and so on. But we never see it. All the times he did something “bad”, he (1) “had no choice”, and that’s not interesting. Characters should have a choice and suffer the consequences for it. (2) The people affected were always the one-dimensional antagonists, so they deserved it. Tobias admits to himself all of them had it coming and that he feels no regret.
His “bad” doings hardly weight much on him. He kills and sees men dying horrible deaths, he beheads a man at the end and he's all up for kissing sections with his love interest afterward. Witnessing and inflicting so much violence should be extremely traumatizing for someone “good” like him. By the end of the book, he should be broken to shreds, but he feels pretty much the same.
So, he’s supposed to be an artist, it’s even his laurel… I didn’t buy that. I’m an artist myself, so maybe this got me especially annoyed. Art was rarely brought up and he didn’t act like he cared all that much about it. And that would have been fine if we weren't constantly told how art was his life passion. In one of the challenges, the men need to make a tribute to the Savior, so Tobias decides to make a portrait of Cosima, except he can’t. He makes portraits of Leila over and over again, unable to stop himself. Then he’s out of canvas, loses the challenge and puts a target on his back.
But How can he not realize what he was drawing?? And how is he so unable to just draw what he wants? His life is on the table here. Can people please stop portraying art like this mystical gift that springs out of our hands? It’s a craft, based on skill, and it doesn’t work like that! We have full control over what we are doing. He's suddenly so in love that he loses all of his wits and is unable to control his own damn hand? He’d known the girl for like a week at this point. That was so absurd I gave up on trying to take this novel seriously.
The author tries so hard to paint him like a hero, he’s literally saving people all the time. We're frequently reminded that he's handsome, even all the other men think so. His attempts to be charming are cringey and unintentionally funny, but harmless most of the time, except:
“Intimidating? Well, I suppose I can see it. You’re confident, intelligent, not to mention very beautiful. It’s a formidable combination. It’s certainly easier on the ego to pursue a lesser woman.”
That's how he flatters his girlfriend, by putting her above other women. I’d love to know what is a lesser woman. If a woman is not “beautiful”, or “intelligent” she’s automatically lesser? Fuck him, really. (and Jenna calls herself a feminist *sigh*)
And Leila... she’s as much unlikable as Tobias. She’s flawlessly beautiful (in the most cookie-cutter way possible) and petite and dainty and soft, but she’s a skilled fighter too (because who needs strong muscles to be a fighter), and she’s snarky and takes no man’s shit. She stabs them. She’s smarter than all of them. Anyone who doesn’t like her is just intimidated by how beautiful and awesome she is. And she is actually the real Savior trying to discover who her father assigned to murder her. That’s the big plot twist.
*eye roll*
There’s absolutely nothing wrong about making a character beautiful, but stop shoving down our throats how beautiful and perfect they are. Please, stop it. We don’t need to read Tobias drooling over Leila for a dozen paragraphs. Every time he sees her, he goes on and on about her beauty and the boner she gives him, I swear If it was a drinking game someone would die of alcohol poisoning.
Leila is also meant to be bold and honest, but she’s just obnoxious. And a hypocrite, it's not even a legit character flaw, it's inconsistent characterization. She often rants about the goriness and violence of the tournament and how the men are dehumanized. She wants to end it. Yet, when she’s crossed, she stabs people, she commits cold-blooded murder by throwing a guy off a cliff, she assassinated her father’s senators, she gives a weapon so Tobias and the other men can kill another competitor. Again, I guess it’s okay because the men targeted are flat murderers and sexual assaulters? But don't try to paint her like this morally superior being who preaches against the bloodbath. She sounds a lot like the ultra-conservative people in my country who are “pro-life” but defend things like “a good criminal is a dead criminal”.
"Pippa—she’s darling, isn’t she? My little duckling, following me wherever I go."
Pippa is a court girl and has a developmental delay. Again, I know this was supposed to be endearing, but to me Leila is saying that Pippa is her little loyal pet and that’s just disgusting. Pippa is severely infantilized as this clueless ray of sunshine amid all the violence. Like Naomi, she's helpless. They need the noble MCs to rescue and protect them from everything. Why treat characters with disabilities so poorly?
But most of the supporting cast was as much useless. All the villains are flat caricatures, not one had a convincing motivation, if any motivation. Cosima resembled a less over the top version of Madison from EVE and it bothers me that Jenna has a tendency to depict the “hot” big-breasted women as treacherous and/or “sexually promiscuous”. Flynn was just annoying and 90% of his role was to make crude sexual remarks in every dialogue so I don't understand his purpose. Everyone else was more of a blur.
There’s diversity, but it wasn’t done well. And I have to rely on the characters portraits on the author’s website because their descriptions are either forgettable or their ethnicities are never clear in the first place.
So… why the most powerful, beautiful, divine and good being of this world ALWAYS has to be the whitest of all the white? I’m not talking about any magical aspect and how they’re filled with white light (which is also so convenient). Leila and Cosima are overly exalted for their beauty, fairness and milky skin, all the time. As if this is weren’t problematic enough, the non-white characters are given such poor treatment. The two Asian men are one dimensional and villainized, one is even brutally murdered by Leila. Raphael, the super smart black guy, is never shown to be smart, or at least not smarter than most of the other men, especially Tobias. God forbid a secondary character being smarter than your protagonist. Delphi’s personality was nice, but her role revolved too much around Leila for my taste and she ends up as just the black best friend. The others were killed off or not important at all. This left such a bitter taste, like the author just wants the marketability of diversity but is not interested to know what can be harmful to portray. There is not one POC in this novel that is a well-rounded and truly good representation and not constantly overshadowed by the white MCs.
Romance:
Tobias and Leila get too intense too fast. The build-up is extremely rushed and unsubtle and we are always told everything that’s happening. Their moments together drag, their conversations are cheesy and everything is so right in your face. When Tobias is thinking of her, it often goes like “I’m thinking of Leila, she’s so beautiful and cool, I got a boner. Stop it I'm here for Cosima. Oops, thought of Leila again.” I’m not even paraphrasing by much.
There is a trend in their relationship. They argue, Leila refuses to talk about it, Tobias does something incredibly stupid, potentially deadly, to get a chance to mend things, they argue some more and end up face-sucking each other. All their conflicts come from miscommunication, and their arguments are painful to read. If they acted like adults, or at least weren’t conveniently interrupted all the time, this book would have been so much shorter.
I didn’t find them to be that healthy. I liked that consent was explicitly stated on both sides and that they were usually nice to each other, but I still have qualms about their many dumb misunderstandings and communication issues and fights since so little time has passed. Leila becomes overly jealous for no reason and Tobias is willing to put his life at risk to appease her. She even shouts at him “go fuck yourself” in the end and not in a playful way. If you are this aggressive with your partner and this soon, it’s a red flag.
I never get why they fall so desperately in love. They were just treating each other with civility. It might seem like a big deal when most of the characters are treating them like crap, but it was so out of the blue. There was so much lust involved that I doubt Tobias would have fallen for her if she wasn’t "so goddamn beautiful".
Also, thirty days? I know it’s enough time for someone to fall in love, but that is NOT the same thing as “I love you forever and ever, we’ll spend the rest of our lives together, lets get married right now and I’ll and take care of you even in the afterlife”. If the characters feel like this so soon, I’m just gonna think they’re emotionally immature. Love - mature, abiding love - takes time to grow no matter the circumstances. Tobias and Leila are proclaiming their undying love after knowing each other for barely a month and I didn’t buy it.
Plot:
Why was this tournament the best idea to secure a strong bloodline for the saviors? Why is it still the best idea? The challenges didn’t serve any purposes. Survival depended more on luck than anything else, otherwise Tobias wouldn’t have made through the first days. He's only alive because he's blessed with magical help several times, it's not even his own merit.
No set of rules is established, they conveniently appear out of thin air to create some cheap tension. If the men can inconsequentially kill one another, why don’t they just do it? If it’s a show mainly for the masses, why so little of it is outside the tunnel or the palace? Why call it a labyrinth when it’s a tunnel? (I don’t care if it was a labyrinth before) and if you’re calling it a labyrinth why not make it a damn labyrinth?
Isn’t there anyone supervising the tournament? Even the palace officials can randomly kill without punishment. Brontes rarely bothered to check what was going on, how his plan was unfolding, so Leila could carry on her own plan. His whole scheme, (to get one of the beats to murder his daughter and get the crown to himself) is never explained. Why didn’t he go for the more obvious and easier alternatives? Why was he even doing it? He’s the main villain and we know nothing about his motivations. They weren’t the kind of questions that left me on the edge for the next book, they were frustrating.
After the first three chapters, the pacing goes as fast as a dead slug. Most of the challenges were essentially action filler scenes and added nothing to the story or characters. The whole plot was formulaic and predictable, I was never surprised and I expected to be with all the hype, but the plot twists are treated with the subtlety of a stampede of wild rhinoceroses.
I’ve hinted this before, but this story is so manipulative. Tobias might look like this “great” guy because the majority of the men are plain trash, and Leila seems so badass and perfect because other women are either bitchy or background noise. Their romance seems so amazing and healthy because they are the only ones being nice to each other for a decent amount of page time.
And to conclude, this isn’t even an adult novel. There’s more to the definition than gore, gratuitous nudity, and over the top swearing. It does not have the proper voice (or any voice) and everything is so shallow. It’s some generic YA book trying too hard to be grown up. The violence was only there for shock value. If I didn’t know any better I’d think that love, and especially sex, were written by a giggling pre-adolescent.
Overall this book is vulgar, needlessly graphic, immature, formulaic and shallow despite being over 170k words long. Its attempts to be profound are hilarious. It doesn’t work even as “mindless” entertainment, it’s so poorly done it wasn't even fun.
April 26, 2018
*I received an advanced reader's copy from the author in exchange for an honest review.
Check out my in-depth video review here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdkdK...
Oh my goodness this book is good.
I love fantasy, but I haven't read one in a long time that has gotten me as excited as this. I also read it in record time.
I'm not going to post a super long review here, as I will be uploading a review on my youtube channel shortly, but I will say this:
Pros:
-The action in this book is superb. The fight scenes are fast-paced and gory (just how I like them) and the sequences were clear and easy to follow.
-The romance is one of the healthiest and easiest to root for I've ever seen. I honestly love this couple so much.
-The writing style is perfect for the story. It communicated what it needed to in order for the reader to get a sense of location and other imagery, while keeping up the pace of the novel.
Cons:
-It's not explained why the strong characters don't just murder all of them at the start of the tournament. They're not punished for murdering, so why don't they just end it there and then? I had to just suspend my disbelief on that one.
-I wish there had been a bit more worldbuilding. I don't feel like I know much about Thessen at all, and despite some of the descriptions of the architecture and clothing, I wouldn't have thought it was based off of Ancient Greece had Jenna not said it on her YouTube channel.
-Tobias, our protagonist, doesn't have enough of a personality off the top. By the end, I have a better sense of who he is, but I still think he needs some more definable and consistent traits.
-I wish there had been a bit more focus on characterizing the important competitors that become Tobias' friends when they were introduced, and more time spent with them in general. Again, I felt like I understood their personalities by the end, but it should've happened sooner.
The cons were pretty minor though (except for the first one, that bugged me a bit), and overall I really loved this story!
Check out my in-depth video review here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdkdK...
Oh my goodness this book is good.
I love fantasy, but I haven't read one in a long time that has gotten me as excited as this. I also read it in record time.
I'm not going to post a super long review here, as I will be uploading a review on my youtube channel shortly, but I will say this:
Pros:
-The action in this book is superb. The fight scenes are fast-paced and gory (just how I like them) and the sequences were clear and easy to follow.
-The romance is one of the healthiest and easiest to root for I've ever seen. I honestly love this couple so much.
-The writing style is perfect for the story. It communicated what it needed to in order for the reader to get a sense of location and other imagery, while keeping up the pace of the novel.
Cons:
-It's not explained why the strong characters don't just murder all of them at the start of the tournament. They're not punished for murdering, so why don't they just end it there and then? I had to just suspend my disbelief on that one.
-I wish there had been a bit more worldbuilding. I don't feel like I know much about Thessen at all, and despite some of the descriptions of the architecture and clothing, I wouldn't have thought it was based off of Ancient Greece had Jenna not said it on her YouTube channel.
-Tobias, our protagonist, doesn't have enough of a personality off the top. By the end, I have a better sense of who he is, but I still think he needs some more definable and consistent traits.
-I wish there had been a bit more focus on characterizing the important competitors that become Tobias' friends when they were introduced, and more time spent with them in general. Again, I felt like I understood their personalities by the end, but it should've happened sooner.
The cons were pretty minor though (except for the first one, that bugged me a bit), and overall I really loved this story!
August 1, 2019
Review coming on the channel soon.
October 11, 2018
non-ѕpoιler
I love Jenna Moreci. She's hilarious and an excellent resource for writers. However, I want to give an honest review that is unswayed by my adoration of her. This is a bad book. From the start, the pacing is agonizingly slow and the first 3 chapters (available on Jenna Moreci's website) serve little purpose. If well-executed, they would be a great way of showing Tobias's reasons for entering the tournament. As it is, the chapters are pointless. We know Tobias will enter from the beginning, so his constant and direct opposition to the tournament makes him feel like a fickle character without real resolve. This sets him up for character weakness throughout the book, which makes it difficult to take Tobias's thoughts and actions as sincere. If the other characters hadn't explained all of Tobias's other supposed traits, then Ms. Jenna could have made this fickleness an intentional character flaw..
I (along with several others) guessed the major plot twist long before it should have been revealed. This isn't because of heavy-handed foreshadowing, but rather because of the blatant tropes certain characters fall into. This plot twist ruined my ,favorite thing about this book's premise.
There are very few compelling characters in this series. The ones that are interesting hardly get any page time. Delphi is my favorite thus far, and I would love to read more about her. However, the main character, the love interest, and the antagonists are all reduced to flimsy tropes. In some cases, this goes beyond annoyance and the characters become blatantly offensive. The evil women are always sexually promiscuous. The evil men are disabled and gay. The women hate on other women.
There is a forced amount of vulgarity. There are constant mentions of breasts, genitals, and sex. There is so much vulgarity that it's unrealistic and wearing to read about. I understand that this was made for adult readers, but other novels handle these sort of adult attitudes in a more mature manner. Both royalty and commonfolk in this series use blatantly sexual, violent, and otherwise inappropriate language equally. This doesn't help the cardboard cutout nature of this book's characters. As it is, the men in this book are caricatures that are focused purely on sex, beauty, money, and their egos. Men are constantly groping women and being violent. The only compassionate man is the main character, and even his constantly mentioned "kindness" and "goodness" are forced and poorly written.
Onto Tobias, the protagonist. Other characters constantly laud him for his goodness, kindness, bravery, and handsomeness. He is unflawed in the narrative's eyes; despite his inconsistency and his ability to turn to violence on a dime. If Ms. Jenna had allowed his actions to speak for themselves instead of explaining his traits through other characters, we could've had a kind man forced into unkind circumstances that changed him. That would've been much more interesting to read about.
The pacing of this book is. . . off. I'm unsure of how to properly explain it. Often times, situations are unnervingly fast-paced. On the other hand, Tobias explains his feelings to the point of redundancy. There is little followup on the evolution of his feelings or why he feels the way he does. There are a few heavy-handed attempts to show his grief, but they are forced and only sprinkled periodically through the book. His family is supposedly very important to him, yet they are scarcely mentioned.
The world-building is also flimsy, and the magic system scarcely explained. While the premise is interesting, its charm is undone by the major plot twist. On top of that, the twist doesn't even make sense in the grander narrative.
This story reads like high-level wattpad fanfiction written from the love interest's perspective. It is not good.
THIS IS THE END OF THE NON-SPOILER SECTION. PLEASE DO NOT CONTINUE READING UNLESS YOU WANT MAJOR PLOT SPOILERS
------------------------------------------------
ѕpoιler
I'm going to start by posting a few of my least favorite sections of this book, without comment. Some of these are self-explanatory. Others may need more explanation
"Never ever disrespect her again, or I swear to God I will bloody you."
Flynn wiped his lips, glancing down at his red fingers. "You love her."
Or perhaps that was a good thing; perhaps she needed to hate him, that way she could move on, could find someone new. A guard passed through a nearby corridor Like him. Tobias's hands curled into fists beneath the water, and he suddenly hated that guard for no reason at all.
Here's the worst. Trigger warning for genital mention.
Leila giggled into her hands, her cheeks bright pink.
"What now?" he said.
"I'd never seen one before." her eyes became larger. "A cock."
This is the love interest guys! This is the main romance we're supposed to be rooting for! This is part of why it reads like high-tier wattpad fanfiction.
Anywho. Leila is the savior. That's the major plot twist that I guessed, the one that ruined this book for me and others. I loved this premise because the love interest wasn't an obvious choice. The summary said that Tobias didn't care for the savior, who is the obvious romantic choice in the novel. The savior is special, powerful, and magical. Perfect for generic romance novels! Even at the end of this book it is unclear why Leila made Cosima stand in as the decoy savior, and why Tobias was apathetic towards Cosima from the start.
This makes the entire plot twist cheap, and makes the book typical and tropey. I also didn't like that Tobias had to constantly save Leila and explain how beautiful she was. Ms. Jenna tried to make their relationship have tension and will-they or won't-they; it was set up in such an insta-love way that this effort was fruitless. I always knew they would end up together. There was no tension, choice, or conflict.
The world building is bland and inconsistent. Off the top of my head, it is not explained why Leila was called away, why she was down in the tunnels, why Cosima is the decoy, why she was flirting with Tobias, and what the savior's court was for. I suppose this is so Ms. Jenna can write book 2 during the same timeline from a different perspective. However, I think this is a weak writing choice and makes TSC look like a half-finished book.
Those are the majority of my qualms with this book. Feel free to let me know your opinions in the comment section!
<3 Ellie
I love Jenna Moreci. She's hilarious and an excellent resource for writers. However, I want to give an honest review that is unswayed by my adoration of her. This is a bad book. From the start, the pacing is agonizingly slow and the first 3 chapters (available on Jenna Moreci's website) serve little purpose. If well-executed, they would be a great way of showing Tobias's reasons for entering the tournament. As it is, the chapters are pointless. We know Tobias will enter from the beginning, so his constant and direct opposition to the tournament makes him feel like a fickle character without real resolve. This sets him up for character weakness throughout the book, which makes it difficult to take Tobias's thoughts and actions as sincere. If the other characters hadn't explained all of Tobias's other supposed traits, then Ms. Jenna could have made this fickleness an intentional character flaw..
I (along with several others) guessed the major plot twist long before it should have been revealed. This isn't because of heavy-handed foreshadowing, but rather because of the blatant tropes certain characters fall into. This plot twist ruined my ,favorite thing about this book's premise.
There are very few compelling characters in this series. The ones that are interesting hardly get any page time. Delphi is my favorite thus far, and I would love to read more about her. However, the main character, the love interest, and the antagonists are all reduced to flimsy tropes. In some cases, this goes beyond annoyance and the characters become blatantly offensive. The evil women are always sexually promiscuous. The evil men are disabled and gay. The women hate on other women.
There is a forced amount of vulgarity. There are constant mentions of breasts, genitals, and sex. There is so much vulgarity that it's unrealistic and wearing to read about. I understand that this was made for adult readers, but other novels handle these sort of adult attitudes in a more mature manner. Both royalty and commonfolk in this series use blatantly sexual, violent, and otherwise inappropriate language equally. This doesn't help the cardboard cutout nature of this book's characters. As it is, the men in this book are caricatures that are focused purely on sex, beauty, money, and their egos. Men are constantly groping women and being violent. The only compassionate man is the main character, and even his constantly mentioned "kindness" and "goodness" are forced and poorly written.
Onto Tobias, the protagonist. Other characters constantly laud him for his goodness, kindness, bravery, and handsomeness. He is unflawed in the narrative's eyes; despite his inconsistency and his ability to turn to violence on a dime. If Ms. Jenna had allowed his actions to speak for themselves instead of explaining his traits through other characters, we could've had a kind man forced into unkind circumstances that changed him. That would've been much more interesting to read about.
The pacing of this book is. . . off. I'm unsure of how to properly explain it. Often times, situations are unnervingly fast-paced. On the other hand, Tobias explains his feelings to the point of redundancy. There is little followup on the evolution of his feelings or why he feels the way he does. There are a few heavy-handed attempts to show his grief, but they are forced and only sprinkled periodically through the book. His family is supposedly very important to him, yet they are scarcely mentioned.
The world-building is also flimsy, and the magic system scarcely explained. While the premise is interesting, its charm is undone by the major plot twist. On top of that, the twist doesn't even make sense in the grander narrative.
This story reads like high-level wattpad fanfiction written from the love interest's perspective. It is not good.
THIS IS THE END OF THE NON-SPOILER SECTION. PLEASE DO NOT CONTINUE READING UNLESS YOU WANT MAJOR PLOT SPOILERS
------------------------------------------------
ѕpoιler
I'm going to start by posting a few of my least favorite sections of this book, without comment. Some of these are self-explanatory. Others may need more explanation
"Never ever disrespect her again, or I swear to God I will bloody you."
Flynn wiped his lips, glancing down at his red fingers. "You love her."
Or perhaps that was a good thing; perhaps she needed to hate him, that way she could move on, could find someone new. A guard passed through a nearby corridor Like him. Tobias's hands curled into fists beneath the water, and he suddenly hated that guard for no reason at all.
Here's the worst. Trigger warning for genital mention.
Leila giggled into her hands, her cheeks bright pink.
"What now?" he said.
"I'd never seen one before." her eyes became larger. "A cock."
This is the love interest guys! This is the main romance we're supposed to be rooting for! This is part of why it reads like high-tier wattpad fanfiction.
Anywho. Leila is the savior. That's the major plot twist that I guessed, the one that ruined this book for me and others. I loved this premise because the love interest wasn't an obvious choice. The summary said that Tobias didn't care for the savior, who is the obvious romantic choice in the novel. The savior is special, powerful, and magical. Perfect for generic romance novels! Even at the end of this book it is unclear why Leila made Cosima stand in as the decoy savior, and why Tobias was apathetic towards Cosima from the start.
This makes the entire plot twist cheap, and makes the book typical and tropey. I also didn't like that Tobias had to constantly save Leila and explain how beautiful she was. Ms. Jenna tried to make their relationship have tension and will-they or won't-they; it was set up in such an insta-love way that this effort was fruitless. I always knew they would end up together. There was no tension, choice, or conflict.
The world building is bland and inconsistent. Off the top of my head, it is not explained why Leila was called away, why she was down in the tunnels, why Cosima is the decoy, why she was flirting with Tobias, and what the savior's court was for. I suppose this is so Ms. Jenna can write book 2 during the same timeline from a different perspective. However, I think this is a weak writing choice and makes TSC look like a half-finished book.
Those are the majority of my qualms with this book. Feel free to let me know your opinions in the comment section!
<3 Ellie
May 25, 2018
It's just another tropey YA novel. I hated it.
Let me break down my main complaints:
- The characters and world-building lack depth.
- Almost nothing is revealed about the magic system, despite it supposedly being a central part of the story.
- The characters are all adults, yet they talk teenagers. Really trashy teenagers.
- It was far, far longer than it needed to be. Most of the conversations could be halved and no plot or character development would be lost.
- The plot twist could not have been more obvious and contrived if she wrote it on the cover.
I should have stopped after Eve, but I was optimistic. I honestly thought her writing would improve with experience. I was wrong. Jenna seems to think that all it takes to make a novel 'adult' is gratuitous violence and excessive swearing. Her novels are nothing more than depthless, vulgar YAs.
Let me break down my main complaints:
- The characters and world-building lack depth.
- Almost nothing is revealed about the magic system, despite it supposedly being a central part of the story.
- The characters are all adults, yet they talk teenagers. Really trashy teenagers.
- It was far, far longer than it needed to be. Most of the conversations could be halved and no plot or character development would be lost.
- The plot twist could not have been more obvious and contrived if she wrote it on the cover.
I should have stopped after Eve, but I was optimistic. I honestly thought her writing would improve with experience. I was wrong. Jenna seems to think that all it takes to make a novel 'adult' is gratuitous violence and excessive swearing. Her novels are nothing more than depthless, vulgar YAs.
Read
March 20, 2022Dnfing this at 13% because there's just so much random cussing, underwhelming writing, questionable world building and anticlimactic and fanfiction-esque situations and dialogues I can bear in a single lifetime.
(out of curiosity I counted how many times the word fuck and its derivates were used and I got 176, followed by 71 cock/cocks, and cunt for the bronze with 28 mentions)
book #36
◾this hashtag is something I self-indulgently created for fun when I decided to thin out my immense tbr list as a new years resolution starting from books I added on GR back in 2017/2018/2019, and since I can't seem to do anything quietly and I'm well known for being an overachiever, I had to go and turn it into an official thing. Feel free to check out the #PenguinOnATBRMission shelf if you don't mind keeping up with this insanely over-hyped adventure I got myself into. Take it as a chance to rediscover some books from a few years ago that might have accidentally flown under your radar, or to simply share with another fellow reader your very own reading experience. Happy reading and stay penguin-y!◾
To Be Continued...🐧
(out of curiosity I counted how many times the word fuck and its derivates were used and I got 176, followed by 71 cock/cocks, and cunt for the bronze with 28 mentions)
book #36
◾this hashtag is something I self-indulgently created for fun when I decided to thin out my immense tbr list as a new years resolution starting from books I added on GR back in 2017/2018/2019, and since I can't seem to do anything quietly and I'm well known for being an overachiever, I had to go and turn it into an official thing. Feel free to check out the #PenguinOnATBRMission shelf if you don't mind keeping up with this insanely over-hyped adventure I got myself into. Take it as a chance to rediscover some books from a few years ago that might have accidentally flown under your radar, or to simply share with another fellow reader your very own reading experience. Happy reading and stay penguin-y!◾
To Be Continued...🐧
November 29, 2020
The strongest plotline of this book was the romance between Tobias and Leila. Their conversations and organic progression within their relationship fit the circumstances well and created an enjoyable story.
May 1, 2018
I was given a free copy of this book in return for an honest review.
SPOILERY REVIEW IS UP IN MY BLOG. Find it here: http://abookandateacup.blogspot.com.a...
Please, click on the following links to watch a book trailer, Jenna’s vlog about the novel, in which she answers without spoilers some fans questions about TSC, and my own review of her first novel, Eve: the Awakening.
Book trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-wR7...
Jenna's vlog on TSC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpNAV...
My review on Eve: http://abookandateacup.blogspot.com.a...
With that said, let’s go to my review. This will be spoiler free.
First of all, let me clarify that this isn’t a bad book. It’s just not for me, but I deserve it, because I knew where I was getting into when I signed up for this. I applied to be an ARC reviewer because I had been thinking that it would be great for me to read something out of my literary comfort zone, which is a good thing, but this book… I think it’s not for everyone, and if you are Christian, like me, there’s many things you won’t agree with, and others that just will be off-putting, and just plain disgusting. My low GoodReads rating is because I particularly didn’t like it, but I can understand why so many people loved it, and will love it once it is published. So, if you are ok with things like constant swearing, specific sexual language and scenes, graphic violence and torture scenes, you won’t have problems with this book.
Don’t get me wrong, though. I love Jenna, and her Youtube channel. I respect her as an author, I think she’s insanely talented and a genuinely good person, and I really liked her first novel, Eve: the Awakening, which sequel I will definitely be reading. I just don’t think her particular style in this novel is for me. I repeat, it’s not a bad book! I’m just not the target audience for it, the same way there’s millions of people who are.
Some of the things I can mention for now, without giving away any spoilers, are the very long chapters, and the heavy, strict outlining. Chapters are really long, more than once I had to take a break from reading without even finishing the chapters, because they were kind of exhausting in their length. And if you follow Jenna, you know how she outlines and applies the process to the actual writing of her books; the very strict following of a previous structure is really noticeable. If you have read my review of Eve: the Awakening, you already know what I think about it, and if you haven’t, click on the link I provided earlier, and you’ll get to it (it’s the penultimate paragraph, if you don’t want to read the whole thing).
Also, names confuse me. On the one hand, the four realms are named Thessen, Kovahr, Ethyua and Trogolia, which are completely made up names. But at the same time, characters are named, for example, Tobias, Leila, Naomi and Raphael, which are names from our own dimension. It’s not the first fantasy novel in which I see this, and it completely depends on the author’s choice, but it confuses me, and makes me wonder, is this the real world or not?
That’s all I can say without spoiling anything. I have a lot of topics to discuss about this book, but that will come after the official release, on April the 24th. I’ll write my review and keep it until then. Don’t forget to visit Jenna’s Youtube channel, and check on her writing advice. In the description box of her every vlog you can find her social media links, including Patreon, and also the stores in which you can both get Eve: the Awakening, and order The Savior’s Champion in your favourite format.
Thank you for reading, and if you are interested in an spoilery review with a deeper analysis of this book, I’ll be back with it by the last week of April, and I'll link it here to my blog.
‘til then!
*If you like what you read, you can find me in my blog for more reviews and other articles: http://abookandateacup.blogspot.com.ar/*
SPOILERY REVIEW IS UP IN MY BLOG. Find it here: http://abookandateacup.blogspot.com.a...
Please, click on the following links to watch a book trailer, Jenna’s vlog about the novel, in which she answers without spoilers some fans questions about TSC, and my own review of her first novel, Eve: the Awakening.
Book trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-wR7...
Jenna's vlog on TSC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpNAV...
My review on Eve: http://abookandateacup.blogspot.com.a...
With that said, let’s go to my review. This will be spoiler free.
First of all, let me clarify that this isn’t a bad book. It’s just not for me, but I deserve it, because I knew where I was getting into when I signed up for this. I applied to be an ARC reviewer because I had been thinking that it would be great for me to read something out of my literary comfort zone, which is a good thing, but this book… I think it’s not for everyone, and if you are Christian, like me, there’s many things you won’t agree with, and others that just will be off-putting, and just plain disgusting. My low GoodReads rating is because I particularly didn’t like it, but I can understand why so many people loved it, and will love it once it is published. So, if you are ok with things like constant swearing, specific sexual language and scenes, graphic violence and torture scenes, you won’t have problems with this book.
Don’t get me wrong, though. I love Jenna, and her Youtube channel. I respect her as an author, I think she’s insanely talented and a genuinely good person, and I really liked her first novel, Eve: the Awakening, which sequel I will definitely be reading. I just don’t think her particular style in this novel is for me. I repeat, it’s not a bad book! I’m just not the target audience for it, the same way there’s millions of people who are.
Some of the things I can mention for now, without giving away any spoilers, are the very long chapters, and the heavy, strict outlining. Chapters are really long, more than once I had to take a break from reading without even finishing the chapters, because they were kind of exhausting in their length. And if you follow Jenna, you know how she outlines and applies the process to the actual writing of her books; the very strict following of a previous structure is really noticeable. If you have read my review of Eve: the Awakening, you already know what I think about it, and if you haven’t, click on the link I provided earlier, and you’ll get to it (it’s the penultimate paragraph, if you don’t want to read the whole thing).
Also, names confuse me. On the one hand, the four realms are named Thessen, Kovahr, Ethyua and Trogolia, which are completely made up names. But at the same time, characters are named, for example, Tobias, Leila, Naomi and Raphael, which are names from our own dimension. It’s not the first fantasy novel in which I see this, and it completely depends on the author’s choice, but it confuses me, and makes me wonder, is this the real world or not?
That’s all I can say without spoiling anything. I have a lot of topics to discuss about this book, but that will come after the official release, on April the 24th. I’ll write my review and keep it until then. Don’t forget to visit Jenna’s Youtube channel, and check on her writing advice. In the description box of her every vlog you can find her social media links, including Patreon, and also the stores in which you can both get Eve: the Awakening, and order The Savior’s Champion in your favourite format.
Thank you for reading, and if you are interested in an spoilery review with a deeper analysis of this book, I’ll be back with it by the last week of April, and I'll link it here to my blog.
‘til then!
*If you like what you read, you can find me in my blog for more reviews and other articles: http://abookandateacup.blogspot.com.ar/*
July 15, 2018
I don't think I've ever been this happy to finish a book.
A quick rundown of the bad:
- The stakes are laughably low. Even more so after the big plot-twist
- The romance is an insta-love between Mr & Mrs Sue.
- There is no world-building, none, despite how long this book is.
- Characters are caricatures, protagonist, and villain included.
- So many characters, but only a handful maters.
- The magic is not explained enough to seem 'real' and is too central of a theme to get a pass by pulling the 'soft magic system' card.
Some 'meh' I'm still not sure how to feel about.
- The excessive swearing, it kept pulling me out of the story not because of the swearing itself, but because it was so horribly repetitive.
- The villain was cartoonish, but I guess that it's a matter of taste since not everyone likes a 'shades of grey' villain.
- So much mention of 'God', when in theory it should have been 'Goddess' or 'Saviour'? Since there is no god and the Saviour is the Holly queen?
- We didn't learn anything about the politics or the dynamic with other realms and countries, which isn't really crucial...but you'd think we'd get some of it.
A few good things.
- The fight scenes were cool if a bit theatrical, but enjoyable.
- All the diversity.
- Cosima...? Maybe?
All in all, disappointing.
A quick rundown of the bad:
- The stakes are laughably low. Even more so after the big plot-twist
- The romance is an insta-love between Mr & Mrs Sue.
- There is no world-building, none, despite how long this book is.
- Characters are caricatures, protagonist, and villain included.
- So many characters, but only a handful maters.
- The magic is not explained enough to seem 'real' and is too central of a theme to get a pass by pulling the 'soft magic system' card.
Some 'meh' I'm still not sure how to feel about.
- The excessive swearing, it kept pulling me out of the story not because of the swearing itself, but because it was so horribly repetitive.
- The villain was cartoonish, but I guess that it's a matter of taste since not everyone likes a 'shades of grey' villain.
- So much mention of 'God', when in theory it should have been 'Goddess' or 'Saviour'? Since there is no god and the Saviour is the Holly queen?
- We didn't learn anything about the politics or the dynamic with other realms and countries, which isn't really crucial...but you'd think we'd get some of it.
A few good things.
- The fight scenes were cool if a bit theatrical, but enjoyable.
- All the diversity.
- Cosima...? Maybe?
All in all, disappointing.
June 16, 2019
Genuinely shocked at the positive reviews for this work. I'm not one to write reviews normally, but if someone could find this which is in contention with the outrageous four stars, and this saves them some money, then it was worth writing.
First, its a romance novel. Don't allow the advertising and author to convince you otherwise. That doesn't automatically make it a bad book, don't get me wrong. Not all romance novels are awful. This just happens to be one that is not only a bad romance book, it is one marketed as an adventure fantasy. The political intrigue and power dynamics are as shallow as a high school teen flick. Nothing makes sense and everyone is dumb. The cliches are murderous. From ceaseless and casual phrases, such as "in another time, you and I could have been friends," to entire characters that start to meld together into bizarre caricatures. The main characters are depicted in such a strangely "aren't they so perfect" way they become completely unlikable. Add in hefty exposition, poor and weak world-building, confusing contradictions, absent descriptions that result in characters seemingly acting as floating heads arguing on a white stage, and bizarre dialogue that will make you cry "who even talks like this??"
There is so much wrong with this book, it's hard to even summarize.
The entire conceit begs so many unanswered questions. How could our Mary Sue Savior, who banished all the bad in the world just by virtue of being born, have a competition to the death for her hand in marriage? The book will hand-wave this with "isn't tradition so bad and sad? We should challenge tradition!" This is, of course, without an examination into how traditions are formed or sustained. It is what it is and isn't it bad? Our main character, Tobias, enters the competition because of his sister, who is positioned as a burden and not a person, despite being vehemently opposed to it and after literally a single night of thinking about it. We're never told why he is so exceptional as to question this tradition and think it is stupid, other than that the author herself holds that point of view.
In all the men in all the areas who tried out for the competition, wouldn't you know that Tobias' best friend and neighbor, who convinced him to join in a single night, also makes it in! What are the chances? It makes the world seem incredibly small, despite another Champion claiming to be from another kingdom ruled by another Queen, and a scene near the end where a bunch of foreign rulers show up for apparently no reason other than to bet and give Tobias a reason to talk smack. These sort of convenient set ups are continuous, making little sense and receiving little explanation. The Evil Dudes are evil for no reason, even when it would be in their self-interests to be "good." (The black and white morality of this book is also a huge point of contention for me.)
Even after reading, I have so many questions. Not "ohhh whats going to happen next" questions. No. Questions like: Why all the "cock," Moreci? Why did the main character have a scene touching himself? Why do they speak like teenagers, except the near constant and maddening "apologies?" Why do the characters use the word "God" in a world with a walking Goddess, is this in line with their religions, what are their religions?? Why?
Basically, this reads as a first draft. It is a first draft that needs hard editing, from the world to the writing. There was a concept here that might have worked, given the time and effort and editing required, and the removal of the Mary Sue Savior who cures the world of all Bad Things. Adult concepts are clumsily handled in the style of a middle grade fiction, with characters straight out of a sexist nightmare. There are just so many times a good editor would have gone, "yo, what, dude?"
Such as when a character explains its okay his wife died in childbirth, as she was destined to be with him.
Or when the love interest comforts the main character that, even though his sister's life must be the worst ever because she can't walk, she has him and he is "good."
Or how the quasi-Roman crowd expose their chests to flash the main character in a way that reads like a bad concert fic.
Or how the only other women allowed to exist are either mentally disabled, related to the main character, lesbian, or Evil. Other than the perfect love interest, of course. Which serves to make her exist in a vacuum where she is free of sexual competition, which is bizarre. We are gifted entire conversations between male characters which revolve around how superior love interest is to the Evil female character, who only has "shallow beauty."
That's before we even touch on the sexualized "more girl than woman" who is only added at the end to discuss how she wants to sleep with the Champions. This child is also Evil and begs her much older husband to purchase one (with the biggest cock) for the night for him to watch uh yeah, something he apparently enjoys. Again, what?
Oh, and Tobias' first kiss was with a much older girl who sexually assaulted him??
Clearly Moreci has a big issue with women.
She also positions sexual promiscuity as going hand in hand with being morally evil, and being sexually chaste with morally good. She reinforces this over and over. It's so outdated and strange, I didn't even catch it at first. But there it was, all along. This character is good because she has restraint and won't sleep with Tobias, this character is bad because she wants to sleep with Tobias. Ironically, this traditional message is inherent in the text despite Moreci constantly going "isn't tradition bad??" The cognitive dissonance is so prevalent. It's also prevalent when Tobias' superiority complex rears its head and he laments on "how anyone could love this character they've had one conversation with." All the while, he's willing to die for someone he's had a handful of (often antagonistic) exchanges with. All the conflict between the love interests, which spans pages and pages of fighting and hurt feelings, is entirely because of a failure to communicate.
Wow this review is long. I could go on. I have gone on, already, but this is just touching the surface of the issues within the book. It would take a review exponentially longer than this one to properly go through how awful it is. In sum, what, dude?
First, its a romance novel. Don't allow the advertising and author to convince you otherwise. That doesn't automatically make it a bad book, don't get me wrong. Not all romance novels are awful. This just happens to be one that is not only a bad romance book, it is one marketed as an adventure fantasy. The political intrigue and power dynamics are as shallow as a high school teen flick. Nothing makes sense and everyone is dumb. The cliches are murderous. From ceaseless and casual phrases, such as "in another time, you and I could have been friends," to entire characters that start to meld together into bizarre caricatures. The main characters are depicted in such a strangely "aren't they so perfect" way they become completely unlikable. Add in hefty exposition, poor and weak world-building, confusing contradictions, absent descriptions that result in characters seemingly acting as floating heads arguing on a white stage, and bizarre dialogue that will make you cry "who even talks like this??"
There is so much wrong with this book, it's hard to even summarize.
The entire conceit begs so many unanswered questions. How could our Mary Sue Savior, who banished all the bad in the world just by virtue of being born, have a competition to the death for her hand in marriage? The book will hand-wave this with "isn't tradition so bad and sad? We should challenge tradition!" This is, of course, without an examination into how traditions are formed or sustained. It is what it is and isn't it bad? Our main character, Tobias, enters the competition because of his sister, who is positioned as a burden and not a person, despite being vehemently opposed to it and after literally a single night of thinking about it. We're never told why he is so exceptional as to question this tradition and think it is stupid, other than that the author herself holds that point of view.
In all the men in all the areas who tried out for the competition, wouldn't you know that Tobias' best friend and neighbor, who convinced him to join in a single night, also makes it in! What are the chances? It makes the world seem incredibly small, despite another Champion claiming to be from another kingdom ruled by another Queen, and a scene near the end where a bunch of foreign rulers show up for apparently no reason other than to bet and give Tobias a reason to talk smack. These sort of convenient set ups are continuous, making little sense and receiving little explanation. The Evil Dudes are evil for no reason, even when it would be in their self-interests to be "good." (The black and white morality of this book is also a huge point of contention for me.)
Even after reading, I have so many questions. Not "ohhh whats going to happen next" questions. No. Questions like: Why all the "cock," Moreci? Why did the main character have a scene touching himself? Why do they speak like teenagers, except the near constant and maddening "apologies?" Why do the characters use the word "God" in a world with a walking Goddess, is this in line with their religions, what are their religions?? Why?
Basically, this reads as a first draft. It is a first draft that needs hard editing, from the world to the writing. There was a concept here that might have worked, given the time and effort and editing required, and the removal of the Mary Sue Savior who cures the world of all Bad Things. Adult concepts are clumsily handled in the style of a middle grade fiction, with characters straight out of a sexist nightmare. There are just so many times a good editor would have gone, "yo, what, dude?"
Such as when a character explains its okay his wife died in childbirth, as she was destined to be with him.
Or when the love interest comforts the main character that, even though his sister's life must be the worst ever because she can't walk, she has him and he is "good."
Or how the quasi-Roman crowd expose their chests to flash the main character in a way that reads like a bad concert fic.
Or how the only other women allowed to exist are either mentally disabled, related to the main character, lesbian, or Evil. Other than the perfect love interest, of course. Which serves to make her exist in a vacuum where she is free of sexual competition, which is bizarre. We are gifted entire conversations between male characters which revolve around how superior love interest is to the Evil female character, who only has "shallow beauty."
That's before we even touch on the sexualized "more girl than woman" who is only added at the end to discuss how she wants to sleep with the Champions. This child is also Evil and begs her much older husband to purchase one (with the biggest cock) for the night for him to watch uh yeah, something he apparently enjoys. Again, what?
Oh, and Tobias' first kiss was with a much older girl who sexually assaulted him??
Clearly Moreci has a big issue with women.
She also positions sexual promiscuity as going hand in hand with being morally evil, and being sexually chaste with morally good. She reinforces this over and over. It's so outdated and strange, I didn't even catch it at first. But there it was, all along. This character is good because she has restraint and won't sleep with Tobias, this character is bad because she wants to sleep with Tobias. Ironically, this traditional message is inherent in the text despite Moreci constantly going "isn't tradition bad??" The cognitive dissonance is so prevalent. It's also prevalent when Tobias' superiority complex rears its head and he laments on "how anyone could love this character they've had one conversation with." All the while, he's willing to die for someone he's had a handful of (often antagonistic) exchanges with. All the conflict between the love interests, which spans pages and pages of fighting and hurt feelings, is entirely because of a failure to communicate.
Wow this review is long. I could go on. I have gone on, already, but this is just touching the surface of the issues within the book. It would take a review exponentially longer than this one to properly go through how awful it is. In sum, what, dude?
April 28, 2018
I'm basing this off of the first three chapters and prologue available on Jenna Moreci's website. I don't feel like I would actually have read beyond this point if I'd actually bought the book. I don't think this is a completely terrible book. It's below average. If you like it, that's absolutely fine. I'm not marking any of this with a spoiler warning, since all of this is freely available on Jenna Moreci's website.
The Prologue
Yeah, my problems kick off with the first page of this book. Why is The Savior in a random, unnamed town? Why is she completely on her own? Why is nobody guarding her? We get told later on that The Savior is the Queen of Thessen, but apparently she can just wander around on her own, with nobody around to guard her? I don't care if she's the most beloved person in the country (realm? State? I'm a bit unclear on what Thessen exactly is), The Savior is the monarch of a state, and should still have protection around her at all times.
Even if this turned out to be The Savior having an affair with someone, this would still make me wonder all of these things.
EDIT (Expect some more of these as I ruminate on this):
The Savior gets her throat cut deep enough that she dies within minutes. And she doesn't notice it until she touches her throat. Just... no. All of the no. If her throat was cut, and she didn't notice it, that cut isn't killing her.
The Worldbuilding
This is my biggest issue with TSC. I don't have any understanding of the world. I know Tobias lives in a town (or village, depending on which part you read - I am pedantic AF, these are not the same thing!); I know there is a Savior that seems to have saved Thessen; I know there is a fortress of no real description. I have no idea how these things connect.
Where is Tobias' town/village? It's clearly close to the fortress, because we know he can see it in Chapter 2. But there's no context given. What is there around the town? Everything in Chapter 1 is clearly supposed to give some exposition, but there just isn't any. We don't know anything about Thessen, other than it exists. For all I know, it could comprise Tobias' village/town; wherever The Savior is killed in the prologue (which could very well be the same place as Tobias’ village/town for all we’re told); and the fortress that I’m guessing the Savior resides in. I'm not asking for Tolkein levels of exposition, just some level of orientation. Like, where the fuck am I? Where the fuck am I going? How far away is it?
EDIT: This one's a real doozy.
Skimming through my YouTube, I came across Jenna Moreci's advice on worldbuilding, and boy is it depressing:
1. "If [villages and towns] are applicable to your story, name them."
- So this doesn't happen in regards to Tobias' village, where we spend at least two chapters (or around thirty, forty pages).
2. "Consider the earth, and more importantly, what the surface of the earth looks like."
- This didn't happen either...
3. "The last two things to consider are plant life and animal life."
- Please see above...
4. Architecture.
- This happened! In the book! This one actually happened!
- I feel it's important to point out that Jenna's not a total hypocrite when it comes to worldbuilding. Just... mostly.
5. "What's the history of your setting?"
- Summed up in around a paragraph explaining who The Savior is, that's what it is. Thessen was... I guess pretty much non-existent before this?
6. "Is there an upper, middle, and lower class?"
- Okay, let's be straight on this one. Thessen is supposed to be a monarchy. The Savior is the queen. There are an entire category of competitors in the tournament called "The Lords", so I'm assuming it's actually a feudal system.
- Tobias' village/town/I don't even care at this point is apparently completely exempt from this. The Lords just rock up at the tournament with no allusion to them whatsoever, in spite of this being a gamechanger in how we view Thessen.
- Tobias works as a labourer - he's a peasant. But he's apparently the only one cutting sugar? And there's a guy that's paying him to do it? That's sure as hell not a feudal community if I saw one. Which begs the question of where The Lords fit into the whole equation.
7. "How are laws passed and enforced?"
- How are laws passed and enforced in Thessen? I don't know. Is there some sort of court to enact The Savior's will? Tobias' village doesn't seem to have anyone seemingly in charge of it - even the most basic forms of rural community at least tend to have an alderman of some description.
8. "The first and most obvious thing to nail down is whether or not your world has some sort of belief system."
- ... Really? Fucking really? Okay, just see the next section and you'll understand why I think this is bullshit.
The Language
No, I’m not talking about the use of expletives. I’m Scottish, the words “fuck”, “shit”, and “cunt” are what we use for punctuating sentences. My problems come when modern language starts to bleed through, like this:
“God, I hope his cock is small. Who am I kidding? It’s probably perfect. I hate him already.” (47)
Which God is he talking about? The Savior is implied to be a religious icon, but there’s now apparently an actual God? Just to be clear, this isn’t a one-off:
God, he could’ve used a breeze, but the air remained perfectly still, and the sun continued to beat down on him like fire; it was a torture he’d never grown accustomed to even after two years in this line of work. (7)
The man pulled a small purse from his pocket. Coin. Thank God. (8)
“God, this is heavy.” (8)
She grimaced. “My God, you reek.” (11)
“And when that traitor was finally seized... God, I can’t even speak of the things the Sovereign did to him.” (14)
Their mother shook her head. “God rest their souls.” (14)
“God, and I thought I was free from this conversation.” (16)
Tobias sighed. “God, I can’t believe you’re saying this...” (16)
He stopped short. “Good God, what if She is a troll?” (17)
That’s just in Chapter 1, and I probably missed some. My point is, it’s getting brought up enough in what is ostensibly a different world that I want to know which fucking god is being talked about.
EDIT: Okay, so, Jenna Moreci has attempted to address this on Tumblr by saying that Thessen has a monotheistic religion (not dissimilar from Abrahamic religions) where The Savior is attributed to this god. There is a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment where this is pointed out, but it's so unclear that you'll probably skim right over it:
"We thank You for Her life, Her dominion, and for the peace and prosperity She has brought upon our realm." (13)
This is part of the way through a prayer, but that's the only reference to a god that we can get. And this could just as easily apply to the previous Savior as a god, or indeed the Sovereign (it's takes two to do the horizontal tango after all).
My problems continue: in the short summary we get of The Savior's backstory (9), this is never once discussed. So, as far as I'm concerned, The Savior's Champion still doesn't address this issue. Any information outside the pages of the book should not be considered part of it.
Problem III: Revenge of the Reviewer: There is a point to address this when The Savior's magic is introduced vicariously through Obvious Female-Lady-Woman-Love-Interest. The Savior's magic is considered to be Hers. The Savior shares Her magic. The magic does not come from the Thessen God, but from The Savior. The Savior distributes the magic; not the Thessen God.
So, the overall impression we get of the Thessen God in the book is one of a deity completely sidelined by their representative in the physical realm. There's no attention paid to it, despite being the only god worshipped by Thessians, with the exception of a single throwaway line that could even be attributed to the brave sperm of The Sovereign that worked its tail the fastest.
Tobias
I don’t care about Tobias.
There, I said it.
Seriously, I don't find Tobias interesting in the slightest. The first couple of chapters are so rushed that there is no chance to connect with him. We know he works hard. We know he loves his family… I'm drawing a blank on anything else. Tobias doesn't have much in the way of a defining character trait that seems like it will be developed throughout the story.
I also have a bit of an issue with Tobias entering the tournament. To compare it to the most obvious counterpart in The Hunger Games, Katniss enters the Hunger Games because her sister is chosen, and she volunteers to literally save her sister's life. Tobias enters the tournament because his sister is disabled, and he wants to make her more comfortable; but it's not a life-or-death kind of deal. In fact, it’s pretty heavily implied that people typically survive the tournament. So immediately the stakes are lowered.
Also, Tobias enters the tournament because they'll get some money. But it’s not clear why this is going to help. What can they do with money that they can’t do without it? From the talk Tobias has with his sister, it’s clear that the problem is not that she’s uncomfortable:
“I’m going to the apothecary tomorrow. I’ll get you some valerian root.”
“Don’t bother,” she grumbled. “It does nothing but put me to sleep.”
“Would you rather be sleeping or suffering?”
“I’d rather be dead.”
Tobias faltered. “You don’t mean that."
Naomi was quiet, staring off at something—perhaps at nothing at all. (19)
So yeah. Naomi wants to die. Her problem is with her disability, not the circumstances around her. I find it pretty questionable that she could be made more comfortable in some way that would change her perspective on her disability. Also, this gets fulfilled by the start of Chapter 3, so this motive doesn’t even work for the majority of the book:
He wavered. “When would my family be paid?”
“Excuse me?”
“I mean, if I were selected to compete. When would they be paid?”
She pursed her lips. “Immediately.” (35)
Tobias keeps telling Milo about how he's going to get killed (this gets repeated several times in one conversation), but when people actually start getting killed (including Milo), he's suddenly shocked by this? No. You don't get to tell people that they're going to die, and then get shocked by people getting killed, especially when that includes the person that you were saying was going to die.
So yeah, I don’t like Tobias.
Kaleo
Kaleo is probably the only interesting character in the first three chapters, and he’s only there for one of them. Milo has almost three full chapters of time for character development, and I still don’t care about him when he dies violently. In fact, that bit is kind of hilarious. I know Milo’s death is supposed to be shocking and make us hate Kaleo and all that jazz, but I don’t care about Milo, because… well, why would I?
Kaleo has a particular sense of humour; he has a habit of marking his body for everyone he's killed (shades of Michael B. Jordan all over this shit); and we can clearly see that Kaleo is playing to win, since he's killing everyone for shits and giggles. In short, he is an actual character! A real character! Except, then I realised that he’s just going to be the standard "evil-because-he's-evil" kind of antagonist. Suffice to say, that killed my hopes for this character developing.
EDIT: Other Characters:
Let's start with the laurels. These are a weird, inconsistent mix of job titles and characteristics that break the tournament competitors into high school cliques:
There's the nerdy kids - The Savants.
There's the posh kids - The Lords.
There's the jocks - The Beasts.
And there's the kids that are of no consequence at all - The Stalwarts.
Some of these are job titles, like "The Farmer" or "The Physician" or "The Poet". Some are just characteristics, like "The Benevolent" or "The Brave". Most of these are pretty much inconsequential - they don't really do much but assign some descriptions so a few people can be redshirted straight off the bat.
Most of The Lords seem to be the same. They talk the way people think posh people talk (hint: we don't call each other "Good man" and "fellow" and all that; we're just like you, but with more money and better education). They're all about having sex with other people. That's pretty much it. It's old by the second sentence.
The immediate contrast set up is between the nerds and the jocks (yeah, I'm sticking with this). The nerds are seen as "bait" which immediately makes everyone wonder why they even bother entering (seriously, if the tournament is supposed to be that deadly, why would any of the nerds decide to enter? They have literally no transferable skills to the tournament). The jocks all stick together and literally do that thing where two jocks hold the nerd while the lead jock knocks the shit out of them (check out p. 64, it's actually pretty funny how outclassed Tobias is).
Other Stuff:
Things that were just too short for their own category:
People don’t seem to understand the concept of lying:
Tobias’ mother tells him not to help with his sister because he’s working in the morning. When he gets back at what seems like the same time as the previous day, after waiting in line with Milo, she’s all pissed off because he’s been out all day:
His mother’s gaze became stern. “You’ve labored all day. You’ll do the same tomorrow. You need your rest.” (18)
Compared to:
“Tobias!” His mother sprang from the bedside. “Where in God’s (Oh look, another God reference!) name have you been?”
“How long has she been like this? She was fine this morning—”
“You had me sick with worry,” his mother snapped. “Gone for hours without a single explanation.”
“I went to get valerian root.” (28)
Why didn’t he just lie and say he was working? And if Tobias’ mother knew he wasn’t working that day, why did she tell him not to help with his sister the night before?
The Farmer dies because he decides not to lie to the scary fucking giant guy:
“You said something.” Antaeus leaned in close. “And you’ll tell me what you said right
now.”
The Farmer hesitated, his voice wavering. “It’s blasphemous. The way you speak of Her... It’s disgraceful.” (59)
[Cue gory death scene]
Short tip on survival: if a probably extremely violent giant asks you what you said, and you said something that’s probably going to offend him, don’t tell him what you said. That shit’s not going to go down well.
EDIT: The whole setup of the romance is kind of hilarious:
So Tobias' love interest opens up with him being accused of killing people because... he looks like he's had the shit kicked out of him? The logic is weird on this one.
I can't work out why, but Tobias has a line so melodramatic that I took about five minutes to stop laughing:
"Don't look at him. He's dangerous."
Her eyes shrank into a glare. “He doesn’t scare me.” (68)
I'm guessing this is supposed to set up Tobias' love interest as a strong independent young woman that don't need no man, but this is just so over the top that it's funny.
Just a short note on Naomi’s disability:
“It’s clear, really. You’re alive because I need you.” (19)
I know this sounds kind of nitpicky, but I hate this line. I really, really hate it. The idea that Naomi’s existence is in some way tied to the fact that Tobias needs her makes me feel really uncomfortable. I know the intention behind this line isn’t likely to be malicious, but it reads like Naomi’s only purpose is to make Tobias feel happy – as if her autonomy depends on his existence.
Feel free to dispute any of these issues, I'm more than happy to have these things criticised. Try to make it at least something concrete though.
The Prologue
Yeah, my problems kick off with the first page of this book. Why is The Savior in a random, unnamed town? Why is she completely on her own? Why is nobody guarding her? We get told later on that The Savior is the Queen of Thessen, but apparently she can just wander around on her own, with nobody around to guard her? I don't care if she's the most beloved person in the country (realm? State? I'm a bit unclear on what Thessen exactly is), The Savior is the monarch of a state, and should still have protection around her at all times.
Even if this turned out to be The Savior having an affair with someone, this would still make me wonder all of these things.
EDIT (Expect some more of these as I ruminate on this):
The Savior gets her throat cut deep enough that she dies within minutes. And she doesn't notice it until she touches her throat. Just... no. All of the no. If her throat was cut, and she didn't notice it, that cut isn't killing her.
The Worldbuilding
This is my biggest issue with TSC. I don't have any understanding of the world. I know Tobias lives in a town (or village, depending on which part you read - I am pedantic AF, these are not the same thing!); I know there is a Savior that seems to have saved Thessen; I know there is a fortress of no real description. I have no idea how these things connect.
Where is Tobias' town/village? It's clearly close to the fortress, because we know he can see it in Chapter 2. But there's no context given. What is there around the town? Everything in Chapter 1 is clearly supposed to give some exposition, but there just isn't any. We don't know anything about Thessen, other than it exists. For all I know, it could comprise Tobias' village/town; wherever The Savior is killed in the prologue (which could very well be the same place as Tobias’ village/town for all we’re told); and the fortress that I’m guessing the Savior resides in. I'm not asking for Tolkein levels of exposition, just some level of orientation. Like, where the fuck am I? Where the fuck am I going? How far away is it?
EDIT: This one's a real doozy.
Skimming through my YouTube, I came across Jenna Moreci's advice on worldbuilding, and boy is it depressing:
1. "If [villages and towns] are applicable to your story, name them."
- So this doesn't happen in regards to Tobias' village, where we spend at least two chapters (or around thirty, forty pages).
2. "Consider the earth, and more importantly, what the surface of the earth looks like."
- This didn't happen either...
3. "The last two things to consider are plant life and animal life."
- Please see above...
4. Architecture.
- This happened! In the book! This one actually happened!
- I feel it's important to point out that Jenna's not a total hypocrite when it comes to worldbuilding. Just... mostly.
5. "What's the history of your setting?"
- Summed up in around a paragraph explaining who The Savior is, that's what it is. Thessen was... I guess pretty much non-existent before this?
6. "Is there an upper, middle, and lower class?"
- Okay, let's be straight on this one. Thessen is supposed to be a monarchy. The Savior is the queen. There are an entire category of competitors in the tournament called "The Lords", so I'm assuming it's actually a feudal system.
- Tobias' village/town/I don't even care at this point is apparently completely exempt from this. The Lords just rock up at the tournament with no allusion to them whatsoever, in spite of this being a gamechanger in how we view Thessen.
- Tobias works as a labourer - he's a peasant. But he's apparently the only one cutting sugar? And there's a guy that's paying him to do it? That's sure as hell not a feudal community if I saw one. Which begs the question of where The Lords fit into the whole equation.
7. "How are laws passed and enforced?"
- How are laws passed and enforced in Thessen? I don't know. Is there some sort of court to enact The Savior's will? Tobias' village doesn't seem to have anyone seemingly in charge of it - even the most basic forms of rural community at least tend to have an alderman of some description.
8. "The first and most obvious thing to nail down is whether or not your world has some sort of belief system."
- ... Really? Fucking really? Okay, just see the next section and you'll understand why I think this is bullshit.
The Language
No, I’m not talking about the use of expletives. I’m Scottish, the words “fuck”, “shit”, and “cunt” are what we use for punctuating sentences. My problems come when modern language starts to bleed through, like this:
“God, I hope his cock is small. Who am I kidding? It’s probably perfect. I hate him already.” (47)
Which God is he talking about? The Savior is implied to be a religious icon, but there’s now apparently an actual God? Just to be clear, this isn’t a one-off:
God, he could’ve used a breeze, but the air remained perfectly still, and the sun continued to beat down on him like fire; it was a torture he’d never grown accustomed to even after two years in this line of work. (7)
The man pulled a small purse from his pocket. Coin. Thank God. (8)
“God, this is heavy.” (8)
She grimaced. “My God, you reek.” (11)
“And when that traitor was finally seized... God, I can’t even speak of the things the Sovereign did to him.” (14)
Their mother shook her head. “God rest their souls.” (14)
“God, and I thought I was free from this conversation.” (16)
Tobias sighed. “God, I can’t believe you’re saying this...” (16)
He stopped short. “Good God, what if She is a troll?” (17)
That’s just in Chapter 1, and I probably missed some. My point is, it’s getting brought up enough in what is ostensibly a different world that I want to know which fucking god is being talked about.
EDIT: Okay, so, Jenna Moreci has attempted to address this on Tumblr by saying that Thessen has a monotheistic religion (not dissimilar from Abrahamic religions) where The Savior is attributed to this god. There is a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment where this is pointed out, but it's so unclear that you'll probably skim right over it:
"We thank You for Her life, Her dominion, and for the peace and prosperity She has brought upon our realm." (13)
This is part of the way through a prayer, but that's the only reference to a god that we can get. And this could just as easily apply to the previous Savior as a god, or indeed the Sovereign (it's takes two to do the horizontal tango after all).
My problems continue: in the short summary we get of The Savior's backstory (9), this is never once discussed. So, as far as I'm concerned, The Savior's Champion still doesn't address this issue. Any information outside the pages of the book should not be considered part of it.
Problem III: Revenge of the Reviewer: There is a point to address this when The Savior's magic is introduced vicariously through Obvious Female-Lady-Woman-Love-Interest. The Savior's magic is considered to be Hers. The Savior shares Her magic. The magic does not come from the Thessen God, but from The Savior. The Savior distributes the magic; not the Thessen God.
So, the overall impression we get of the Thessen God in the book is one of a deity completely sidelined by their representative in the physical realm. There's no attention paid to it, despite being the only god worshipped by Thessians, with the exception of a single throwaway line that could even be attributed to the brave sperm of The Sovereign that worked its tail the fastest.
Tobias
I don’t care about Tobias.
There, I said it.
Seriously, I don't find Tobias interesting in the slightest. The first couple of chapters are so rushed that there is no chance to connect with him. We know he works hard. We know he loves his family… I'm drawing a blank on anything else. Tobias doesn't have much in the way of a defining character trait that seems like it will be developed throughout the story.
I also have a bit of an issue with Tobias entering the tournament. To compare it to the most obvious counterpart in The Hunger Games, Katniss enters the Hunger Games because her sister is chosen, and she volunteers to literally save her sister's life. Tobias enters the tournament because his sister is disabled, and he wants to make her more comfortable; but it's not a life-or-death kind of deal. In fact, it’s pretty heavily implied that people typically survive the tournament. So immediately the stakes are lowered.
Also, Tobias enters the tournament because they'll get some money. But it’s not clear why this is going to help. What can they do with money that they can’t do without it? From the talk Tobias has with his sister, it’s clear that the problem is not that she’s uncomfortable:
“I’m going to the apothecary tomorrow. I’ll get you some valerian root.”
“Don’t bother,” she grumbled. “It does nothing but put me to sleep.”
“Would you rather be sleeping or suffering?”
“I’d rather be dead.”
Tobias faltered. “You don’t mean that."
Naomi was quiet, staring off at something—perhaps at nothing at all. (19)
So yeah. Naomi wants to die. Her problem is with her disability, not the circumstances around her. I find it pretty questionable that she could be made more comfortable in some way that would change her perspective on her disability. Also, this gets fulfilled by the start of Chapter 3, so this motive doesn’t even work for the majority of the book:
He wavered. “When would my family be paid?”
“Excuse me?”
“I mean, if I were selected to compete. When would they be paid?”
She pursed her lips. “Immediately.” (35)
Tobias keeps telling Milo about how he's going to get killed (this gets repeated several times in one conversation), but when people actually start getting killed (including Milo), he's suddenly shocked by this? No. You don't get to tell people that they're going to die, and then get shocked by people getting killed, especially when that includes the person that you were saying was going to die.
So yeah, I don’t like Tobias.
Kaleo
Kaleo is probably the only interesting character in the first three chapters, and he’s only there for one of them. Milo has almost three full chapters of time for character development, and I still don’t care about him when he dies violently. In fact, that bit is kind of hilarious. I know Milo’s death is supposed to be shocking and make us hate Kaleo and all that jazz, but I don’t care about Milo, because… well, why would I?
Kaleo has a particular sense of humour; he has a habit of marking his body for everyone he's killed (shades of Michael B. Jordan all over this shit); and we can clearly see that Kaleo is playing to win, since he's killing everyone for shits and giggles. In short, he is an actual character! A real character! Except, then I realised that he’s just going to be the standard "evil-because-he's-evil" kind of antagonist. Suffice to say, that killed my hopes for this character developing.
EDIT: Other Characters:
Let's start with the laurels. These are a weird, inconsistent mix of job titles and characteristics that break the tournament competitors into high school cliques:
There's the nerdy kids - The Savants.
There's the posh kids - The Lords.
There's the jocks - The Beasts.
And there's the kids that are of no consequence at all - The Stalwarts.
Some of these are job titles, like "The Farmer" or "The Physician" or "The Poet". Some are just characteristics, like "The Benevolent" or "The Brave". Most of these are pretty much inconsequential - they don't really do much but assign some descriptions so a few people can be redshirted straight off the bat.
Most of The Lords seem to be the same. They talk the way people think posh people talk (hint: we don't call each other "Good man" and "fellow" and all that; we're just like you, but with more money and better education). They're all about having sex with other people. That's pretty much it. It's old by the second sentence.
The immediate contrast set up is between the nerds and the jocks (yeah, I'm sticking with this). The nerds are seen as "bait" which immediately makes everyone wonder why they even bother entering (seriously, if the tournament is supposed to be that deadly, why would any of the nerds decide to enter? They have literally no transferable skills to the tournament). The jocks all stick together and literally do that thing where two jocks hold the nerd while the lead jock knocks the shit out of them (check out p. 64, it's actually pretty funny how outclassed Tobias is).
Other Stuff:
Things that were just too short for their own category:
People don’t seem to understand the concept of lying:
Tobias’ mother tells him not to help with his sister because he’s working in the morning. When he gets back at what seems like the same time as the previous day, after waiting in line with Milo, she’s all pissed off because he’s been out all day:
His mother’s gaze became stern. “You’ve labored all day. You’ll do the same tomorrow. You need your rest.” (18)
Compared to:
“Tobias!” His mother sprang from the bedside. “Where in God’s (Oh look, another God reference!) name have you been?”
“How long has she been like this? She was fine this morning—”
“You had me sick with worry,” his mother snapped. “Gone for hours without a single explanation.”
“I went to get valerian root.” (28)
Why didn’t he just lie and say he was working? And if Tobias’ mother knew he wasn’t working that day, why did she tell him not to help with his sister the night before?
The Farmer dies because he decides not to lie to the scary fucking giant guy:
“You said something.” Antaeus leaned in close. “And you’ll tell me what you said right
now.”
The Farmer hesitated, his voice wavering. “It’s blasphemous. The way you speak of Her... It’s disgraceful.” (59)
[Cue gory death scene]
Short tip on survival: if a probably extremely violent giant asks you what you said, and you said something that’s probably going to offend him, don’t tell him what you said. That shit’s not going to go down well.
EDIT: The whole setup of the romance is kind of hilarious:
So Tobias' love interest opens up with him being accused of killing people because... he looks like he's had the shit kicked out of him? The logic is weird on this one.
I can't work out why, but Tobias has a line so melodramatic that I took about five minutes to stop laughing:
"Don't look at him. He's dangerous."
Her eyes shrank into a glare. “He doesn’t scare me.” (68)
I'm guessing this is supposed to set up Tobias' love interest as a strong independent young woman that don't need no man, but this is just so over the top that it's funny.
Just a short note on Naomi’s disability:
“It’s clear, really. You’re alive because I need you.” (19)
I know this sounds kind of nitpicky, but I hate this line. I really, really hate it. The idea that Naomi’s existence is in some way tied to the fact that Tobias needs her makes me feel really uncomfortable. I know the intention behind this line isn’t likely to be malicious, but it reads like Naomi’s only purpose is to make Tobias feel happy – as if her autonomy depends on his existence.
Feel free to dispute any of these issues, I'm more than happy to have these things criticised. Try to make it at least something concrete though.
April 25, 2018
This. Was. So. Good. I needed a good fantasy sooo badly and this definitely filled the void. Full spoiler free review up on the YouTubes if ya want to know my thoughts ❤️ https://youtu.be/71l56wSwt4o
February 19, 2018
Wow. This book. I honestly have been looking for a book like this for SO long.
Not only was I sucked into Tobias's world from the very start, but the prologue also sets up questions that MUST be answered. I'm the type of person who needs a book that'll make me think and question and hang on to every word and that was this book. I'm telling you, if you love real, genuine characters and a story that'll leave you wanting more and more of the world, that's this book right here.
WORLDBUILDING - It was honestly incredible. The author seamlessly weaved this authentic world right before your eyes. There was no annoying info-dumping right away (which I hate) and yet, I had a clear image of everything from start to finish. The customs, culture, attire, setting, and everything was so vivid. Having such a clear picture of the world made it so easy to get lost in this story. I can tell you so much about the world and how it operates so easily after having read it. To me, being able to feel like you could live in this world is super important and the author knocked that out of the park with TSC.
CHARACTERS - I'm a big character-lover. If they suck, I just can't deal with the book. THESE CHARACTERS ARE ABSOLUTELY AMAZING. I love them. Even the shitty ones (personality-wise), I still love. They're all well-rounded and so REAL. The MC, Tobias, is by far my favorite. Jenna somehow created a genuinely good person and shoved him into a world of chaos and death - making him choose between things that most of us would never imagine. His character arc is stunningly written and I just love him. I could gush about him all day, honestly. But he's not the only character that's great. ALL OF THEM are. The author just has this unique ability to make every single character she writes bleed into the pages. They all have their own voices and mannerisms and personalities that makes it easy to forget you're just reading - it feels like you're right in the tournament with them. I just can't get over how amazing these characters really are.
PLOT - I was shocked by this story. You think you know what you're getting when you read the blurb of this book but you get SO MUCH MORE. It's so difficult to find a book that balances so many intriguing elements and once again, the author KILLED IT (no pun intended hehe). You're literally thrust into a world of Tobias's hardships, which are only made worse when he decides to basically sacrifice himself for his family (swoon!). But you're not JUST getting the bloodshed and gore. You're also living through these struggles with Tobias. You're on the journey with him, feeling his pain and enduring his suffering. And then you get that HUMOR. My god is this book is hilarious. But then you also have the lovey dovey FEEEELS. But it's not a crappy romance like you read so much. THIS is my favorite romance ever. That I've ever read (and I've read MANY). It just feels so real.
Overall, I was SO STUNNED by the twist in this story. And to be honest, I find it extremely hard to find books that surprise me - which leaves me bored. THIS WAS THE OPPOSITE. I could not for the life of me figure out what was coming next and I LIVED for it. I wanted - NEEDED that next chapter until the very end.
ROMANCE - This romance. THIS ROMANCE. I'm giving it its own section because MAJOR SWOON. I can't tell you how much I loved this couple. Tobias enters the tournament for one woman and falls for another - which is a sacrifice in and of itself because if anyone finds out...buh bye Toby. But that only adds to the excitement of it all. It was romantic, it was sweet, it was so incredibly funny, and I just want more. I always want more of Tobias and his love interest. Their romance was set up in a way that makes sense, their connection feels real, and I just want to read more and more about them.
OVERALL THOUGHTS - I honestly can't name any other books that can do violence/humor/romance the way Jenna did it with this book. If you love fantasy and you're ready for a real rollercoaster of emotions, strap in. I sweat with anticipation. I cried real tears at certain times. I just loved this book. It's one I will read multiple times and won't get sick of.
I can't wait for the rest of the books in this series. I'm very impatiently waiting!
Not only was I sucked into Tobias's world from the very start, but the prologue also sets up questions that MUST be answered. I'm the type of person who needs a book that'll make me think and question and hang on to every word and that was this book. I'm telling you, if you love real, genuine characters and a story that'll leave you wanting more and more of the world, that's this book right here.
WORLDBUILDING - It was honestly incredible. The author seamlessly weaved this authentic world right before your eyes. There was no annoying info-dumping right away (which I hate) and yet, I had a clear image of everything from start to finish. The customs, culture, attire, setting, and everything was so vivid. Having such a clear picture of the world made it so easy to get lost in this story. I can tell you so much about the world and how it operates so easily after having read it. To me, being able to feel like you could live in this world is super important and the author knocked that out of the park with TSC.
CHARACTERS - I'm a big character-lover. If they suck, I just can't deal with the book. THESE CHARACTERS ARE ABSOLUTELY AMAZING. I love them. Even the shitty ones (personality-wise), I still love. They're all well-rounded and so REAL. The MC, Tobias, is by far my favorite. Jenna somehow created a genuinely good person and shoved him into a world of chaos and death - making him choose between things that most of us would never imagine. His character arc is stunningly written and I just love him. I could gush about him all day, honestly. But he's not the only character that's great. ALL OF THEM are. The author just has this unique ability to make every single character she writes bleed into the pages. They all have their own voices and mannerisms and personalities that makes it easy to forget you're just reading - it feels like you're right in the tournament with them. I just can't get over how amazing these characters really are.
PLOT - I was shocked by this story. You think you know what you're getting when you read the blurb of this book but you get SO MUCH MORE. It's so difficult to find a book that balances so many intriguing elements and once again, the author KILLED IT (no pun intended hehe). You're literally thrust into a world of Tobias's hardships, which are only made worse when he decides to basically sacrifice himself for his family (swoon!). But you're not JUST getting the bloodshed and gore. You're also living through these struggles with Tobias. You're on the journey with him, feeling his pain and enduring his suffering. And then you get that HUMOR. My god is this book is hilarious. But then you also have the lovey dovey FEEEELS. But it's not a crappy romance like you read so much. THIS is my favorite romance ever. That I've ever read (and I've read MANY). It just feels so real.
Overall, I was SO STUNNED by the twist in this story. And to be honest, I find it extremely hard to find books that surprise me - which leaves me bored. THIS WAS THE OPPOSITE. I could not for the life of me figure out what was coming next and I LIVED for it. I wanted - NEEDED that next chapter until the very end.
ROMANCE - This romance. THIS ROMANCE. I'm giving it its own section because MAJOR SWOON. I can't tell you how much I loved this couple. Tobias enters the tournament for one woman and falls for another - which is a sacrifice in and of itself because if anyone finds out...buh bye Toby. But that only adds to the excitement of it all. It was romantic, it was sweet, it was so incredibly funny, and I just want more. I always want more of Tobias and his love interest. Their romance was set up in a way that makes sense, their connection feels real, and I just want to read more and more about them.
OVERALL THOUGHTS - I honestly can't name any other books that can do violence/humor/romance the way Jenna did it with this book. If you love fantasy and you're ready for a real rollercoaster of emotions, strap in. I sweat with anticipation. I cried real tears at certain times. I just loved this book. It's one I will read multiple times and won't get sick of.
I can't wait for the rest of the books in this series. I'm very impatiently waiting!
April 26, 2018
I was trying to understand all the 5 star glowing reviews for this and found out the author has a platform on Youtube. And then I understood.
Needed to fix the lazy editing in terms of world-building, dialogue, character dimension and either the removal of modern terms and slang or the information that this was set in modern times in an alternate-universe??
Needed to fix the lazy editing in terms of world-building, dialogue, character dimension and either the removal of modern terms and slang or the information that this was set in modern times in an alternate-universe??
March 19, 2019
Am I the only one who found this utterly repetitive? Like, there was barely any plot: Tobias enters the tournament, (challenge, sanctuary, crush) n times, falling in love/lust, big fight, (challenge, palace, infatuation) n times, big fight, big reveal, end. I don’t consider the repetition of challenges and lovey-dovey scenes as plot, since we rarely learn anything relevant there, so we’re left with a thin story and a lot of filler.
Such filler consists mainly of interactions among the competitors and Tobias complaining internally about his life choices. I don’t count their deaths as plot points either, seriously. Except for four of five competitors, the rest are background voices and cannon fodder for killing when appropriate. There is no shock when they finally die. Are you telling me that the creepy murderous guy killed the annoying brat with zero self preservation instinct? No way! I was cheering Kaleo to kill all of them and end this nonsense. Why he didn’t slaughter them all in their sleep is beyond me. He ended up being almost a joke, what a shame.
Oh, and also of the love story. Now, I totally acknowledge that maybe I don’t get this because don’t have a clue when it comes to romance, but is this how people work? What I see is two people with a life so empty of kindness that they instantly and completely fall for/lust after (I don’t know if there is a difference here) the first person that treats them like a human being. Which seems to be really few people, what is wrong with Thessians?
Now, the final twist was kind of cool, despite I half-saw it coming and didn’t have the impact it should. Like, I had many pieces but didn’t put them together. Also, the writing is very evocative and flows well and light. Some characters were nice, and there were some funny moments, like and some cool moments, like .
And finally, the worldbuilding. Or lack thereof. There was barely any description. When they were in the labyrinth, I imagined the competitors and tents against a black background, and in the palace, a white one, with the occasional tree around. Yes, there are chairs, and doors, and beds, but I didn’t get any distinct feeling from them. You could say that it is based on Ancient Greece, but this clashes with the dance they teach Tobias, which looks very Renaissance-istic, and things like pants, glass windows, etc. I feel like Moreci threw in a bunch of names from Greek Mythology and trusted the audience to figure out the rest. Which leads into the incongruence problem.
Now, Moreci has stated and proved several times that she is obsessed with Ancient Greek mythology. Which is not the same as Ancient Greek culture. Mythology is only a part of the culture and the culture transpires through the mythology. What happens here is that mythology has been dropped all around the place and the author has filled the holes with things that are diametrically opposite to it: democracy/oligarchy vs absolute queen, sexism vs equality, semi legendary polytheism vs alive monotheistic god, glory through violence vs peace and purity. And therefore the world falls apart by itself.
Thanks for reading!
Such filler consists mainly of interactions among the competitors and Tobias complaining internally about his life choices. I don’t count their deaths as plot points either, seriously. Except for four of five competitors, the rest are background voices and cannon fodder for killing when appropriate. There is no shock when they finally die. Are you telling me that the creepy murderous guy killed the annoying brat with zero self preservation instinct? No way! I was cheering Kaleo to kill all of them and end this nonsense. Why he didn’t slaughter them all in their sleep is beyond me. He ended up being almost a joke, what a shame.
Oh, and also of the love story. Now, I totally acknowledge that maybe I don’t get this because don’t have a clue when it comes to romance, but is this how people work? What I see is two people with a life so empty of kindness that they instantly and completely fall for/lust after (I don’t know if there is a difference here) the first person that treats them like a human being. Which seems to be really few people, what is wrong with Thessians?
Now, the final twist was kind of cool, despite I half-saw it coming and didn’t have the impact it should. Like, I had many pieces but didn’t put them together. Also, the writing is very evocative and flows well and light. Some characters were nice, and there were some funny moments, like and some cool moments, like .
And finally, the worldbuilding. Or lack thereof. There was barely any description. When they were in the labyrinth, I imagined the competitors and tents against a black background, and in the palace, a white one, with the occasional tree around. Yes, there are chairs, and doors, and beds, but I didn’t get any distinct feeling from them. You could say that it is based on Ancient Greece, but this clashes with the dance they teach Tobias, which looks very Renaissance-istic, and things like pants, glass windows, etc. I feel like Moreci threw in a bunch of names from Greek Mythology and trusted the audience to figure out the rest. Which leads into the incongruence problem.
Now, Moreci has stated and proved several times that she is obsessed with Ancient Greek mythology. Which is not the same as Ancient Greek culture. Mythology is only a part of the culture and the culture transpires through the mythology. What happens here is that mythology has been dropped all around the place and the author has filled the holes with things that are diametrically opposite to it: democracy/oligarchy vs absolute queen, sexism vs equality, semi legendary polytheism vs alive monotheistic god, glory through violence vs peace and purity. And therefore the world falls apart by itself.
Thanks for reading!
April 24, 2018
4.75 stars.
A bloody, gladiator style, The Bachelor type of book.
**I was sent an ARC by the author in exchange for honest review**
I was promised healthy romance, a diverse cast and a bloodbath. THIS BOOK DID NOT DISAPPOINT. I absolutely loved it! I cracked open the book when I received it with the intention of just looking quickly at the prologue and I ended up reading half the book in one sitting 😂
The only con I have is that because there are so many characters and practically every character goes by two different names, it’s a little difficult to keep track of who is who. I think this book would benefit from a character roster at the beginning or the end of the book.
I have a video review on my yt channel if anyone is interested: https://youtu.be/UCj3mij1qjs
A bloody, gladiator style, The Bachelor type of book.
**I was sent an ARC by the author in exchange for honest review**
I was promised healthy romance, a diverse cast and a bloodbath. THIS BOOK DID NOT DISAPPOINT. I absolutely loved it! I cracked open the book when I received it with the intention of just looking quickly at the prologue and I ended up reading half the book in one sitting 😂
The only con I have is that because there are so many characters and practically every character goes by two different names, it’s a little difficult to keep track of who is who. I think this book would benefit from a character roster at the beginning or the end of the book.
I have a video review on my yt channel if anyone is interested: https://youtu.be/UCj3mij1qjs
May 23, 2023
Edit upon re-read: Lowered to one star. This does not hold up at all, given what we learn in TSS. Both books should have been substantially shorter and told in alternating perspectives so we're getting just what we need. Instead, the plot bends over backward to accommodate The Big Reveal.
I was really divided on how I wanted to rate this book. It's obvious that Jenna learned a lot from writing Eve and was able to apply it here. On all levels, this is the better book between the two. However, one thing Eve did that The Savior's Champion didn't was surprise me with the reveal. On the one hand, it was definitely entertaining, which is one of the things I look for in a book. On the other, speaking purely from a technical level, it simply was not good. More thoughts below, but beware, there may be some spoilers.
The Good:
The middle. Once Tobias has been in the tournament for a few days, the book seems to hit its stride. Most of the cast has been introduced, the stakes are clearly laid out, and the plot moves at a pretty good clip from one threat to the next.
The main ship. I actually enjoyed the central romance for the most part. It moves very quickly, given that the whole story takes place in about a month, but it didn't feel unrealistic. They have good chemistry.
The Savior's Court. I enjoyed all of these ladies. They don't spend a whole lot of time on the page, but they totally stole every scene they were in.
The Bad:
The length. This book could honestly have been two hundred pages shorter, and I would not have noticed. The number of challenges and the number of competitors could have been cut in half, and it only would have been to the book's benefit. I know that there were twenty men in the tournament to begin with. I can only remember maybe eight or nine of them, and only about five of those other than Tobias himself actually have a plot-relevant reason to be there. Around the time the remaining competitors exit the labyrinth, I looked at how much I had still to go because I thought I'd made such good progress. And despaired to find that I was barely over halfway.
The antagonists. You know exactly who they are from the moment they appear. The good characters are good, and the bad characters are bad, with very little in the way of surprises in their actions or motivations.
The twists. Before I even opened the book, I made a prediction. By the end of the prologue, I made another, and by the end of the second chapter, I made a third. All three turned out to be true. Part of this is just being familiar with the conventions of the fantasy genre, but the other part of it was the foreshadowing. There were several moments related to the Big Reveal that I wanted to reach into the page and give Tobias a brisk shake because he honestly could not be that oblivious. And yet he was. Had the foreshadowing been lain with a lighter hand, I don't think I would have been quite as frustrated.
The Nitpicky
The Labyrinth. The Sovereign's Tournament takes place in the Labyrinth, which you might assume to be a convoluted maze of underground passages. You may also, knowing that Thessen was inspired by ancient Greece, be tempted to draw on mythology and to recall the lair of the Minotaur, which Theseus only found his way through by laying a trail of thread behind him to help navigate successfully out. You would be sorely disappointed. We're told in the story that the Labyrinth used to be a labyrinth but that the branching paths have been closed off. Which, okay, that may be so for in-world reasons. But this is a work of fiction. The author made the intentional choice to call this a labyrinth and to evoke the idea of a complicated set of interweaving paths instead of the Gauntlet or the Sovereign's Path or any number of things to connote a straight tunnel filled with obstacles.
I would forgive this except that Moreci did the same thing in Eve, referring several times (including by trained medical professionals) to characters being dissected alive. There is a word for that. It's "vivisection". So, recalling Eve, I then have to wonder if this actually was a case of the author intentionally choosing the wrong word or of them not knowing that they're using it incorrectly. Words have meanings, and part of being a writer is, to poorly quote Mark Twain, using the right word, not its second cousin.
The competition. This book was described to me as The Hunger Games meets The Bachelorette. Except that the parallel doesn't make sense because both the Hunger Games in Panem and The Bachelorette in our world are designed to be spectacles. They're meant to be watched. But the crowd only gets to witness maybe an hour or two of the entire month-long competition, cumulative. Part of the horror of the competition is supposed to be that the public turns out en masse to watch these men die, that they get off on glamorizing the blood sport. That's lost when they don't actually see any of it.
The worldbuilding. Thessen is a gigantic blank slate to me. I know that it's roughly based on ancient Greece, but that's where it stops. The members of The Savior's Court wear dresses richly dyed in bright colors. But what kind? Are they draped? Wrapped? Puffy petticoats? Silk? Linen? I have no idea. I know that Thessen used to be a desert and that now there are hills and forests. What kind of forest? I don't know. I assume that Thessen is full of beautiful pieces of art, but I don't know because Tobias as a narrator hardly ever describes any paintings, statues, or mosaics. What does the architecture look like? The Ceres Fountain? What is the Arena made from? I couldn't say.
Despite how it may sound, I genuinely did have fun reading this book. However, I found it to be the literary equivalent of pizza and ice cream: fine in moderation but very little in the way of nutrition and probably best not to overindulge. Those things in mind, I think I'd probably put it at about a 2.5 overall.
I was really divided on how I wanted to rate this book. It's obvious that Jenna learned a lot from writing Eve and was able to apply it here. On all levels, this is the better book between the two. However, one thing Eve did that The Savior's Champion didn't was surprise me with the reveal. On the one hand, it was definitely entertaining, which is one of the things I look for in a book. On the other, speaking purely from a technical level, it simply was not good. More thoughts below, but beware, there may be some spoilers.
The Good:
The middle. Once Tobias has been in the tournament for a few days, the book seems to hit its stride. Most of the cast has been introduced, the stakes are clearly laid out, and the plot moves at a pretty good clip from one threat to the next.
The main ship. I actually enjoyed the central romance for the most part. It moves very quickly, given that the whole story takes place in about a month, but it didn't feel unrealistic. They have good chemistry.
The Savior's Court. I enjoyed all of these ladies. They don't spend a whole lot of time on the page, but they totally stole every scene they were in.
The Bad:
The length. This book could honestly have been two hundred pages shorter, and I would not have noticed. The number of challenges and the number of competitors could have been cut in half, and it only would have been to the book's benefit. I know that there were twenty men in the tournament to begin with. I can only remember maybe eight or nine of them, and only about five of those other than Tobias himself actually have a plot-relevant reason to be there. Around the time the remaining competitors exit the labyrinth, I looked at how much I had still to go because I thought I'd made such good progress. And despaired to find that I was barely over halfway.
The antagonists. You know exactly who they are from the moment they appear. The good characters are good, and the bad characters are bad, with very little in the way of surprises in their actions or motivations.
The twists. Before I even opened the book, I made a prediction. By the end of the prologue, I made another, and by the end of the second chapter, I made a third. All three turned out to be true. Part of this is just being familiar with the conventions of the fantasy genre, but the other part of it was the foreshadowing. There were several moments related to the Big Reveal that I wanted to reach into the page and give Tobias a brisk shake because he honestly could not be that oblivious. And yet he was. Had the foreshadowing been lain with a lighter hand, I don't think I would have been quite as frustrated.
The Nitpicky
The Labyrinth. The Sovereign's Tournament takes place in the Labyrinth, which you might assume to be a convoluted maze of underground passages. You may also, knowing that Thessen was inspired by ancient Greece, be tempted to draw on mythology and to recall the lair of the Minotaur, which Theseus only found his way through by laying a trail of thread behind him to help navigate successfully out. You would be sorely disappointed. We're told in the story that the Labyrinth used to be a labyrinth but that the branching paths have been closed off. Which, okay, that may be so for in-world reasons. But this is a work of fiction. The author made the intentional choice to call this a labyrinth and to evoke the idea of a complicated set of interweaving paths instead of the Gauntlet or the Sovereign's Path or any number of things to connote a straight tunnel filled with obstacles.
I would forgive this except that Moreci did the same thing in Eve, referring several times (including by trained medical professionals) to characters being dissected alive. There is a word for that. It's "vivisection". So, recalling Eve, I then have to wonder if this actually was a case of the author intentionally choosing the wrong word or of them not knowing that they're using it incorrectly. Words have meanings, and part of being a writer is, to poorly quote Mark Twain, using the right word, not its second cousin.
The competition. This book was described to me as The Hunger Games meets The Bachelorette. Except that the parallel doesn't make sense because both the Hunger Games in Panem and The Bachelorette in our world are designed to be spectacles. They're meant to be watched. But the crowd only gets to witness maybe an hour or two of the entire month-long competition, cumulative. Part of the horror of the competition is supposed to be that the public turns out en masse to watch these men die, that they get off on glamorizing the blood sport. That's lost when they don't actually see any of it.
The worldbuilding. Thessen is a gigantic blank slate to me. I know that it's roughly based on ancient Greece, but that's where it stops. The members of The Savior's Court wear dresses richly dyed in bright colors. But what kind? Are they draped? Wrapped? Puffy petticoats? Silk? Linen? I have no idea. I know that Thessen used to be a desert and that now there are hills and forests. What kind of forest? I don't know. I assume that Thessen is full of beautiful pieces of art, but I don't know because Tobias as a narrator hardly ever describes any paintings, statues, or mosaics. What does the architecture look like? The Ceres Fountain? What is the Arena made from? I couldn't say.
Despite how it may sound, I genuinely did have fun reading this book. However, I found it to be the literary equivalent of pizza and ice cream: fine in moderation but very little in the way of nutrition and probably best not to overindulge. Those things in mind, I think I'd probably put it at about a 2.5 overall.
July 29, 2018
This book was several train wrecks combined into one larger, overarching disaster--and apparently it's part one of a series for maximum groaning purposes.
The story was like a mix of The Bachelor meets Gladiator. The Hunger Games meets Big Brother. Kind of like The Selection, but nowhere near as smart or as well written. Tobias is the biggest Gary Stu I've ever read, and he is the DUMBEST CHARACTER EVER with so, so many obvious things staring him right in the face and him remaining clueless till the last 5 pages.
I finished this book out of sheer spite. The same plot points happen over and over and over again for several hundred pages and then it ends abruptly and badly. I was not sorry to turn the last page in this story. Yuck.
The story was like a mix of The Bachelor meets Gladiator. The Hunger Games meets Big Brother. Kind of like The Selection, but nowhere near as smart or as well written. Tobias is the biggest Gary Stu I've ever read, and he is the DUMBEST CHARACTER EVER with so, so many obvious things staring him right in the face and him remaining clueless till the last 5 pages.
I finished this book out of sheer spite. The same plot points happen over and over and over again for several hundred pages and then it ends abruptly and badly. I was not sorry to turn the last page in this story. Yuck.
April 12, 2020
I recently revisited this book and since my review didn't age well, I'm changing it.
Back when I read this story my tastes were different and I was still exploring literature and critically viewing it.
From my current standpoint this is a mediocre book. The thing I fell for back then was the diversity of characters and, looking back at it, they weren't even that fleshed out or great. The magic was lacking and it seemed too omnipotent for my taste. Back then I was looking forward to the next book but now I'm pretty sure I won't pick it up.
Back when I read this story my tastes were different and I was still exploring literature and critically viewing it.
From my current standpoint this is a mediocre book. The thing I fell for back then was the diversity of characters and, looking back at it, they weren't even that fleshed out or great. The magic was lacking and it seemed too omnipotent for my taste. Back then I was looking forward to the next book but now I'm pretty sure I won't pick it up.
January 27, 2019
UPDATE: The more I think about this book the more my opinion of it drops. After reading some more reviews I think I will drop my rating further.
So let's start off with the good:
This book is relativity well written. I found few grammatical mistakes or spelling errors which is something is unfortunate enough to warrant saying as there are several self-published authors that do not take as much care to proofread and have their work edited.
The plot is an interesting premise (despite it being something that is a little worn in currently) and it is obvious from both her YouTube channel and the book itself that she is trying to add something new to the table. The moments when Moreci truly is in her element is not surprisingly in the scenes of combat and violence. Moreci is a self-admitted lover of violence and death and she doesn't shy away from killing characters when she needs to and making those scenes as bloody as possible.
Moreci has also managed to diversify her characters in terms of gender, sexuality and ability and this is something that I really do appreciate. She is not afraid to implant these characters into the world and not surprisingly these characters are loved by some readers of these e.g. Pippa and Enzo etc. For the most part I have no issue with the way she chose to present this colourful cast of characters except for one instance - which I will explain later.
However, I do have a LOT of issues with this novel, and more than I particularly wanted.
First off, the exposition. It is glaringly lacking here. Jenna has admitted herself that she hates exposition, however this was something she NEEDED to address. This book is over 173k long! She was not lacking in space to explore her own world. The novel is set in an entirely new fantasy setting called Thesia, and by the end of the book we know next to nothing about it. We know its name, a brief history of the Sovereign's Tournament and maybe the surrounding areas and that's about it. This is simply not good enough when she intends to make a series set in this world - to want readers to come back she must first establish the platform in which the story even takes place! I found myself looking for exposition where there was none to lower my confusion at times. Moreci said she took inspiration from Grecian/Roman history, and yet I struggled to find any meaningful references or descriptions that made me go, "Oh, like Greece." It's only when you look at the back of the cover art for the hardback that you realise, if you didn't already know from her YouTube videos. For instance, they say 'my God'. And yet there is really no exploration of religion in this text? The First Savior was blessed by...some divinity? And yet they worship her? Or do they still worship a God? Is it a God similar to Western cultures? Or is it more feminine, like a goddess? Or do they worship them both, so is the Savior basically a female Jesus? Or is there a pantheon of gods and goddesses which would align more with her historical inspiration? We just don't know. This is only one example and I can think of plenty more. I just found myself dumped into a world with no real explanation as to what was around me and what was going on.
This leads me on to the pacing. I could NOT get on with the pacing throughout this novel. We are thrown into the Tournament within the first 60-70 pages and it feels RUSHED. This book is over 500 pages long and yet we barely see any exploration of Tobias' life outside of the Sovereigns Tournament. We're told he labours on a farm and struggles in the fields day in-day out. Yet we only see him at work once and that's it. Tobias' life before the Tounrament is completely skipped over 0 such as the backstory of what happened to his father to make his sister paralysed or what level of formal education (if any) he has etc. It's removed, presumebly we'll see more of it in the next book but it would have established Tobias' character earlier on and actually make me care for him. Following this we're very quickly thrust into the labyrinth, which I couldn't understand or comprehend the pace. On one day there would be 2 tasks, on another there would only be 1 and on another there would be 3. I just couldn't orient myself to what was actually happening and when. I feel that it would have benefited her to limit herself to one challenge per day, to make these challenges more interesting, as some were most definitely better than others. And then we leave to go to palace. And again the pacing felt...off. We'd gone from fast paced action to a snails pace! Days seemed to stretch and others go by at the speed of light. I just could not get the pacing of this novel.
Another flaw I found was the characters themselves. There were simply TOO MANY. I was forced to rely on their laurels for way too long so when someone died, I simply didn't care because there were too many characters that we never got to see or interact with enough to warrant a reaction. Some quickly showed to be better than others e.g. Orion, Enzo, Delphi and Pippa etc. But some characters you barely know for five minutes. I can't even remember every single character's death - which is not a good thing when some deaths are meant to "haunt" Tobias for the remainder of the book. Now this may be intentional, but after a few chapters I expect to be able to tell who everyone is. Another issue with most of these characters is that their backstories and personal motivations and goals are absent. For instance, Milo. Jenna talks on her YT channel that Tobias and Milo are basically brothers, complete opposites but are extremely close. However, when we see him in the text, I didn't experience this 'brotherly bond'. Yes we understand that Moreci means for us to understand that they're 'close', but I instead was asking, 'why are they even friends?' Milo does not seem to care for Tobias completely legitimate reasons for not wanting to take part in the Tournament and instead basically bullies him into doing it. His fate evoked NOTHING in me because it was way too soon in the novel and again seemed RUSHED. Tobias' grief thus seems to be completely fake and over dramatic purely to provide him a motivator to continue onward whilst the readers genuinely couldn't care less. Example number 2 is Kaleo, Anteaus, Drake etc. We never get to know why they simply didn't slaughter everyone when the Tournament started to quickly whittle down the field of competition. Why is Kaleo like he is? Why is he called the Shepherd? They become flat and boring as they are never given any nuance or dimension. We only really see and understand Tobias and Orion's back stories. 2 out of 20 is not good enough. You'll learn more of their backstories in one of Moreci's videos than you ever will in her novel - which is massively concerning.
In addition, I have a few issues with our main character. Tobias as a secondary character would be okay, not great or even amazing but good. Tobias as a protagonist...not so much. He's a serviceable character at best, and I don't particularly dislike him, but I just couldn't seem to find any real traits to his character. He's said to be an artist, and yet he barely shows this at all. He never really creates much or even just draw in the dirt/mud etc. The one time when he CAN use his skill he buckles and decides that he cannot stop drawing the face of a girl he's known for all of 5 minutes despite the fact that his life depends on it? I felt that his character was bland. He becomes a gary-sue which is neither appealing or interesting - able to fight for his life in one instance and then waiting for someone else to solve his issues in another. The swing between them gave me whiplash and made his annoying at best and frustrating at worst. Moreci puts Tobias in situations that are daunting and seem unbeatable, that's what is meant to provides the tension and the drama. However, there comes a point when it simply becomes a bit ridiculous. Going against a man who kills people for a living and a noble trained to use a weapon since birth unarmed but coming out on top? By the end, he can handle a sword perfectly and is able to shoot a wolf, despite never having handled a bow in his life. It becomes tedious and predictable very fast. His reactions to deaths of others as I mentioned above also becomes boring as he is always restrained by his friends and so he never really has any meaningful confrontations or lashes out. These instances feel forced and unnecessary. Regarding the romance aspect of this book, I felt this there was a bit of an insta-romance between Tobias and our leading lady. It's NOT an insta-romance, but it does come very close and feels very quick, especially by the end when they're admitting their love and yet they've known each other for less than 30 days and Leila is keeping secrets from him and yet she expects him to bare his soul for her.
Finally, the plot twist and the ending of the novel. It was NOT satisfying at all. The plot twist had been obvious and predictable from the moment Tobias met Leila. He doesn't notice the supposed Savior and yet all he can think about is Leila's beauty? Wow. Shock -_-. We basically get no resolution and answers from Leila, despite her teases throughout the entire novel and the ending is clear sequel bating. Moreci is working on the next novel and we will supposedly get our answers there and it will be the same book told from Leila's perspective. However, I expect a complete package with any book and I don't like having to rely on more books simply to answer questions left over from the last. One or two questions? - maybe. Four or five questions and unfinished plot lines?- no. It was clear sequel baiting and it left me sore. In addition, our main villain seemed to fall into several unpleasant tropes towards the end. The 'gay/bisexual villain who sexually harrasses men and women to show he is evil' has been done and I found myself not entirely too pleased with it. If she had developed his backstory, as again, by the end of the novel we basically know nothing about him, then this may have not been so bad. That said, I did enjoy a villain who was evil for the sake of being evil. I'm glad she didn't give him some 'tragic' backstory to explain his 'evilness'. He's evil because it's fun and I appreciate that. The ending also leaves the fate of a certain competitor hanging and we basically never find out what happens to him. This was SO frustrating as I was personally looking forward to his death (as bad as that makes me sound). I just found that the ending, much like the beginning, was rushed and unnecessarily so.
So, do I like this book? Looking back, I did originally find this book 'kind of' decent but now I simply will say that this book isn't the worst on the market or even in the genre, but it certainly was my biggest disappointment.
Would I recommend this and will I be buying the next? I honestly do not know. I can tell you that since Moreci published this book, I have not once even been able to bring myself to watch her YouTube videos due to just the sheer amount of hypocrisy. I loved Moreci's videos but until she learns to follow her own advice I think that is how it's going to stay. I would maybe recommend this book to someone new to the genre or someone who actually likes quick/insta romances but that's about as much as I can say.
I expected more. Moreci needs to focus on her world building in the next book and ensure that she answers main questions/plot lines in that book and not leave it to the next. I would also say that she either needs to work with fewer characters or go into more detail on characters that exist in the world.
I make it seem like I despise the book and I don't. I read it in less than 24 hours. However, I expected a more and that stings a little.
So let's start off with the good:
This book is relativity well written. I found few grammatical mistakes or spelling errors which is something is unfortunate enough to warrant saying as there are several self-published authors that do not take as much care to proofread and have their work edited.
The plot is an interesting premise (despite it being something that is a little worn in currently) and it is obvious from both her YouTube channel and the book itself that she is trying to add something new to the table. The moments when Moreci truly is in her element is not surprisingly in the scenes of combat and violence. Moreci is a self-admitted lover of violence and death and she doesn't shy away from killing characters when she needs to and making those scenes as bloody as possible.
Moreci has also managed to diversify her characters in terms of gender, sexuality and ability and this is something that I really do appreciate. She is not afraid to implant these characters into the world and not surprisingly these characters are loved by some readers of these e.g. Pippa and Enzo etc. For the most part I have no issue with the way she chose to present this colourful cast of characters except for one instance - which I will explain later.
However, I do have a LOT of issues with this novel, and more than I particularly wanted.
First off, the exposition. It is glaringly lacking here. Jenna has admitted herself that she hates exposition, however this was something she NEEDED to address. This book is over 173k long! She was not lacking in space to explore her own world. The novel is set in an entirely new fantasy setting called Thesia, and by the end of the book we know next to nothing about it. We know its name, a brief history of the Sovereign's Tournament and maybe the surrounding areas and that's about it. This is simply not good enough when she intends to make a series set in this world - to want readers to come back she must first establish the platform in which the story even takes place! I found myself looking for exposition where there was none to lower my confusion at times. Moreci said she took inspiration from Grecian/Roman history, and yet I struggled to find any meaningful references or descriptions that made me go, "Oh, like Greece." It's only when you look at the back of the cover art for the hardback that you realise, if you didn't already know from her YouTube videos. For instance, they say 'my God'. And yet there is really no exploration of religion in this text? The First Savior was blessed by...some divinity? And yet they worship her? Or do they still worship a God? Is it a God similar to Western cultures? Or is it more feminine, like a goddess? Or do they worship them both, so is the Savior basically a female Jesus? Or is there a pantheon of gods and goddesses which would align more with her historical inspiration? We just don't know. This is only one example and I can think of plenty more. I just found myself dumped into a world with no real explanation as to what was around me and what was going on.
This leads me on to the pacing. I could NOT get on with the pacing throughout this novel. We are thrown into the Tournament within the first 60-70 pages and it feels RUSHED. This book is over 500 pages long and yet we barely see any exploration of Tobias' life outside of the Sovereigns Tournament. We're told he labours on a farm and struggles in the fields day in-day out. Yet we only see him at work once and that's it. Tobias' life before the Tounrament is completely skipped over 0 such as the backstory of what happened to his father to make his sister paralysed or what level of formal education (if any) he has etc. It's removed, presumebly we'll see more of it in the next book but it would have established Tobias' character earlier on and actually make me care for him. Following this we're very quickly thrust into the labyrinth, which I couldn't understand or comprehend the pace. On one day there would be 2 tasks, on another there would only be 1 and on another there would be 3. I just couldn't orient myself to what was actually happening and when. I feel that it would have benefited her to limit herself to one challenge per day, to make these challenges more interesting, as some were most definitely better than others. And then we leave to go to palace. And again the pacing felt...off. We'd gone from fast paced action to a snails pace! Days seemed to stretch and others go by at the speed of light. I just could not get the pacing of this novel.
Another flaw I found was the characters themselves. There were simply TOO MANY. I was forced to rely on their laurels for way too long so when someone died, I simply didn't care because there were too many characters that we never got to see or interact with enough to warrant a reaction. Some quickly showed to be better than others e.g. Orion, Enzo, Delphi and Pippa etc. But some characters you barely know for five minutes. I can't even remember every single character's death - which is not a good thing when some deaths are meant to "haunt" Tobias for the remainder of the book. Now this may be intentional, but after a few chapters I expect to be able to tell who everyone is. Another issue with most of these characters is that their backstories and personal motivations and goals are absent. For instance, Milo. Jenna talks on her YT channel that Tobias and Milo are basically brothers, complete opposites but are extremely close. However, when we see him in the text, I didn't experience this 'brotherly bond'. Yes we understand that Moreci means for us to understand that they're 'close', but I instead was asking, 'why are they even friends?' Milo does not seem to care for Tobias completely legitimate reasons for not wanting to take part in the Tournament and instead basically bullies him into doing it. His fate evoked NOTHING in me because it was way too soon in the novel and again seemed RUSHED. Tobias' grief thus seems to be completely fake and over dramatic purely to provide him a motivator to continue onward whilst the readers genuinely couldn't care less. Example number 2 is Kaleo, Anteaus, Drake etc. We never get to know why they simply didn't slaughter everyone when the Tournament started to quickly whittle down the field of competition. Why is Kaleo like he is? Why is he called the Shepherd? They become flat and boring as they are never given any nuance or dimension. We only really see and understand Tobias and Orion's back stories. 2 out of 20 is not good enough. You'll learn more of their backstories in one of Moreci's videos than you ever will in her novel - which is massively concerning.
In addition, I have a few issues with our main character. Tobias as a secondary character would be okay, not great or even amazing but good. Tobias as a protagonist...not so much. He's a serviceable character at best, and I don't particularly dislike him, but I just couldn't seem to find any real traits to his character. He's said to be an artist, and yet he barely shows this at all. He never really creates much or even just draw in the dirt/mud etc. The one time when he CAN use his skill he buckles and decides that he cannot stop drawing the face of a girl he's known for all of 5 minutes despite the fact that his life depends on it? I felt that his character was bland. He becomes a gary-sue which is neither appealing or interesting - able to fight for his life in one instance and then waiting for someone else to solve his issues in another. The swing between them gave me whiplash and made his annoying at best and frustrating at worst. Moreci puts Tobias in situations that are daunting and seem unbeatable, that's what is meant to provides the tension and the drama. However, there comes a point when it simply becomes a bit ridiculous. Going against a man who kills people for a living and a noble trained to use a weapon since birth unarmed but coming out on top? By the end, he can handle a sword perfectly and is able to shoot a wolf, despite never having handled a bow in his life. It becomes tedious and predictable very fast. His reactions to deaths of others as I mentioned above also becomes boring as he is always restrained by his friends and so he never really has any meaningful confrontations or lashes out. These instances feel forced and unnecessary. Regarding the romance aspect of this book, I felt this there was a bit of an insta-romance between Tobias and our leading lady. It's NOT an insta-romance, but it does come very close and feels very quick, especially by the end when they're admitting their love and yet they've known each other for less than 30 days and Leila is keeping secrets from him and yet she expects him to bare his soul for her.
Finally, the plot twist and the ending of the novel. It was NOT satisfying at all. The plot twist had been obvious and predictable from the moment Tobias met Leila. He doesn't notice the supposed Savior and yet all he can think about is Leila's beauty? Wow. Shock -_-. We basically get no resolution and answers from Leila, despite her teases throughout the entire novel and the ending is clear sequel bating. Moreci is working on the next novel and we will supposedly get our answers there and it will be the same book told from Leila's perspective. However, I expect a complete package with any book and I don't like having to rely on more books simply to answer questions left over from the last. One or two questions? - maybe. Four or five questions and unfinished plot lines?- no. It was clear sequel baiting and it left me sore. In addition, our main villain seemed to fall into several unpleasant tropes towards the end. The 'gay/bisexual villain who sexually harrasses men and women to show he is evil' has been done and I found myself not entirely too pleased with it. If she had developed his backstory, as again, by the end of the novel we basically know nothing about him, then this may have not been so bad. That said, I did enjoy a villain who was evil for the sake of being evil. I'm glad she didn't give him some 'tragic' backstory to explain his 'evilness'. He's evil because it's fun and I appreciate that. The ending also leaves the fate of a certain competitor hanging and we basically never find out what happens to him. This was SO frustrating as I was personally looking forward to his death (as bad as that makes me sound). I just found that the ending, much like the beginning, was rushed and unnecessarily so.
So, do I like this book? Looking back, I did originally find this book 'kind of' decent but now I simply will say that this book isn't the worst on the market or even in the genre, but it certainly was my biggest disappointment.
Would I recommend this and will I be buying the next? I honestly do not know. I can tell you that since Moreci published this book, I have not once even been able to bring myself to watch her YouTube videos due to just the sheer amount of hypocrisy. I loved Moreci's videos but until she learns to follow her own advice I think that is how it's going to stay. I would maybe recommend this book to someone new to the genre or someone who actually likes quick/insta romances but that's about as much as I can say.
I expected more. Moreci needs to focus on her world building in the next book and ensure that she answers main questions/plot lines in that book and not leave it to the next. I would also say that she either needs to work with fewer characters or go into more detail on characters that exist in the world.
I make it seem like I despise the book and I don't. I read it in less than 24 hours. However, I expected a more and that stings a little.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 28, 2018
In my full review (linked below) I gave this book 2 stars. That was before I realized that the second book will be the exact same story but from the love interest POV!!!??? Like what!!!???? I officially feel cheated by the fact that I read this book. Why oh why not just have two POV's in the first book? It would have made it 6,000 times more interesting and make a lot more sense. Ugh!! I would not recommend this book to anyone >:(
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AhWM...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AhWM...
January 3, 2019
Update: 1/2/2019
OK i know i don't need to beat a dead horse and I should just forget this shitty book BUT I was trying to go to sleep last night and a thought occurred to me
Original: 9/3/2018
TW: Gore, death, casual abelism, men being creepy at women, women being creepy towards men, sexual assault on both ends, excessive cursing (in the book and I do quote sections in the review)
Oh boy.
Oh fucking boy.
How Jenna got so many 5 star reviews will forever haunt me.
THE SAVIORS CHAMPIONS takes place in the fictional fantasy world of Thessen. Thessen is ruled by a holy queen, the Savior, who's magic protects the lands from famine and war. On The Savior's 20th birthday, 20 men are selected to fight int he Savior's Tournament in order to win her hand in marriage.
Quick and dirty review: Awkward dialogue, little to no world building, decent romance. It was a train-wreck like THE CAPTIVE PRINCE was a train wreck, hated it but it was engaging. Overall, it's THE HUNGER GAMES but with more cursing, more explicit bloody scenes, and done less well. Save your money.
Full review:
OK i know i don't need to beat a dead horse and I should just forget this shitty book BUT I was trying to go to sleep last night and a thought occurred to me
Original: 9/3/2018
TW: Gore, death, casual abelism, men being creepy at women, women being creepy towards men, sexual assault on both ends, excessive cursing (in the book and I do quote sections in the review)
Oh boy.
Oh fucking boy.
How Jenna got so many 5 star reviews will forever haunt me.
THE SAVIORS CHAMPIONS takes place in the fictional fantasy world of Thessen. Thessen is ruled by a holy queen, the Savior, who's magic protects the lands from famine and war. On The Savior's 20th birthday, 20 men are selected to fight int he Savior's Tournament in order to win her hand in marriage.
Quick and dirty review: Awkward dialogue, little to no world building, decent romance. It was a train-wreck like THE CAPTIVE PRINCE was a train wreck, hated it but it was engaging. Overall, it's THE HUNGER GAMES but with more cursing, more explicit bloody scenes, and done less well. Save your money.
Full review:
August 4, 2021
The Savior’s Champion - Jenna Moreci
Read: June 2019
Genre: Adult
Length: 555 pages
Time Read In: 2 days
Swearing in This Review: Yes
Spoilers: Possibly? I ranted a lot but tried to keep from letting out anything big.
I went ahead and read this book twice. After the first time, I needed a break to think and evaluate my feelings. Then, I thought I'd reread to see if my initial response was really how I felt about this book. ... It was.
Alright, so we’ll start out with the obvious, like many people who have bought and read this book, I watch Jenna Moreci’s YouTube channel. I enjoy her content and I think she has some good tips and tricks, especially for those who are looking to eventually self publish. So, to show my support and appreciation, I decided to purchase Moreci’s second novel, The Savior’s Champion. I probably expected a little too much, if I’m being honest. But, I’d spent so much time watching Moreci’s videos that I figured there was no way I wouldn’t enjoy this novel, even if romance isn’t exactly my style.
Boy howdy, I was in for some disappointment. I still like Jenna Moreci’s videos and I’ll continue to support her, because I think she does great things for the writing community, but I’ve learned not to expect too much from my idols. Let’s break down some of my main problems with this book:
The Beginning (the Prologue - just call it the Prologue. I hate that authors try to put a different title on prologues. Though, to be fair, I also hate prologues. They’re a waste of everyone’s time - is a complete waste. It’s unnecessary and does nothing to add to the story. It only brought me more questions. Why was the Savior running through the streets? Later in the story, the Savior has an entire pose of women. Where’s the first Savior’s pose? Why does no one else know she’s in danger? I think it would have been far more effective just to throw us in with Tobias and let us know what happened to the previous Savior during the story. ALSO - and this really made me angry because Moreci has so many videos in which she yells out other writers for doing unrealistic shit in action - it doesn’t take seeing your own blood to realize that you throat has been slit. I feel like you realize that pretty quickly.
To be fair, this one might just be a personal pet peeve but I hated the capitalization of any word referring to the Savior. Like, I get it, it’s like how some people capitalize the word he when they’re referring to god. The Savior = God (but, like does she? Because they pretty clearly talk about a god in the story - saying “God” pretty frequently. So, is the Savior a god? I don’t know. You don’t know. BECAUSE THEIR RELIGIOUS SYSTEM IS NEVER EXPLAINED). That being said, the constant capitalizations dragged me straight out of the story. Especially when they were addressing Cosmia with “you”. It’s just jarring. But again, that may just be a personal pet peeve.
The repetition. Look, I get it. Moreci wants us to know that Tobias has no plans to enter the Sovereign's Tournament. But she didn’t need to beat us over the head with him constantly telling himself and everyone else that he hates it. Instead of telling others and thinking about how much he angstily hates the Savior and her father’s competition, Tobias could - I dunno - do something useful. Not be annoying so that I actually care about his character. And, speaking of beating people over the head, if I ever read the word “apologies” again, I’ll beat myself over the head. Saying “sorry” instead of “apologies” every once in a while is okay. I promise. I’m also a fantasy writer. No one’s going to yell at you for using more than one word to convey something, Moreci. Trust me. Same thing with the insults. I get that this is an adult book, but that doesn’t mean “bitch”, “cunt”, and “cock” need to be your only insults. You’ve got different people from different cultures from all over in this book and they all use those three insults? Look in other languages and pull from that. In my research (and I could be wrong because internet), I’ve found that in German, it isn’t uncommon to tell people “lick me” when translated literally, but comparatively, it would be “bite me”. Different cultures, different ways to say things.
Alright, to get oddly specific, in Chapter 2, near the end, this really frustrating thing happens. Tobias thinks he and other competitors would get time to train before the tournament begins and honestly, that would have been a great idea from a plot standpoint. Like take the Savior out of the mix for the first half of the plot and actually let us get to know these guys. Let Lelia keep sneaking down to play doctor so that we can get to see their relationship develop because a month? Really? I’m sorry, Moreci says she hates insta love, but what do you think this is girlfriend? People don’t fall in love in a month. They fall in like. I’ve been dating my bf for a month (known him for longer) and I ain’t in love, ya’ll. And, if we'd gotten to know these guys better, I might have cared when they died.
The Challenges. I felt so cheated because I thought I was going to get some awesome Indiana Jones/Uncharted shit in here. The Labyrinth is supposed to be this big, scary test of endurance, strength and intelligence and yet it has the answers literally written out on the walls. Am I really supposed to believe that Tobias is smart and resourceful when in reality he’s just not blind?
That plot twist. Look, I’m not going to bitch that much about the plot twist being obvious. I’ve been reading for a long time and the twists is a classic trope in this kind of story. I will complain that Tobias is stupid. … And so is Lelia. Moreci talks a big game about healthy relationships, but those tend to include communication. Something these characters are determined to ignore. Side note, just because these two are the only characters halfway decent to each other doesn’t mean they have any chemistry. This relationship is the definition of meh. Which, I think is because I had a meh attitude towards both of these characters. Tobias was an annoying goody-goody, pure heart protagonist who whined about the situation he agreed to put himself into - knowing full well what it was. Lelia reminds me of some of my writing friend’s poorly fleshed out female protagonist from our teenage years - fully able to take care of herself until the plot demands it and quick witted and calm until she needs to be a giggling school girl for her new boy toy. The only relationship I vaguely rooted for was Enzo and Zander and we all know how that one turned out.
And that relationship brings me to this. Allow me, as a very bixexual woman, to tell you about the two most problematic quotes (in my mind) in this entire book:
1. “Yes, pretty. lIke women, but men.” - Enzo, a gay ass man who likes men, not woman, page 295, Chapter 15 “The Dog”.
Now, some of you are thinking: "But Blair, he’s saying he likes attractive, thin men". And to you I say, pull your head out of your ass. What just came out of this gay man’s gay mouth was “I like men that remind me of women”. I have a lot of words for this quote. They all have for letters and would be beeped out on national television. Because, I can tell you, as a VERY bisexual woman, with some VERY gay/lesbian friends, that we don’t say shit like that. We don’t compare sexes guys. I don’t look at a buff girl and think “I like her because she looks like a man”. Fuck you. Do you know what being gay means? NOT THIS.
2.“Do we have time for a little fun? I’ve always enjoyed his face.” … “Come on, it can be part of the torture. I’ll fuck him bloody.” - Kaleo, the bisexul villain. Page 522, Chapter 27 “The Culmination”.
*clears throat* OH FUCK YOU! I don’t know what the fuck is up with writers and making their bi villians rape happy, but it needs to stop. Shockingly, us bis have more to do than think about all the sex we’re going to have with everyone because we’re attracted to both sexes so we MUST want to sleep with everyone. FUCK YOU. On another tangent, why do bi/gay people always have to be attracted to the story’s mc? I can guarantee that your character isn’t all that. And, shockingly, gay people aren’t attracted to everyone of the same sex they meet. Maybe I’m the only person having a problem with these moments. *Glances at the review section* NOPE. Not just me. Okay good. Jenna Moreci, I get you’re straight, I know you want diversity in your book to keep from getting torn apart by sjw, but on behalf of myself (and probably a few more members of the LGTBQ+ community)... IF YOU CAN’T WRITE THESE CHARACTERS WITH SOME UNDERSTANDING AND RESPECT, DON’T WRITE THEM!
*Deep breath in*
*Deep breath out*
Alright, my rants have finished. This has already gone on way longer than I thought it would. There’s several other problematic things in this book, Pippa (seriously? This is how we’re handling this character? Seriously, Moreci?), the most beautiful woman in the world being the whitest bitch you know (...do I really have to comment on that?), and several other things I noticed but don’t feel I have the background or knowledge to comment on. So I’ll leave that to those who know better.
The Savior’s Champion certainly wasn’t the worst book I’ve ever read but it is far from the best. Which is disappointing to say the least. As an aspiring writer who’s been watching Moreci’s videos for some time now, I think I have the right to be pretty disgusted. With a bloated storyline and forgettable characters, The Savior’s Champion will make its way to my library’s shelf and await the next poor soul intrigued by an interesting premise that’s wasted.
Read: June 2019
Genre: Adult
Length: 555 pages
Time Read In: 2 days
Swearing in This Review: Yes
Spoilers: Possibly? I ranted a lot but tried to keep from letting out anything big.
I went ahead and read this book twice. After the first time, I needed a break to think and evaluate my feelings. Then, I thought I'd reread to see if my initial response was really how I felt about this book. ... It was.
Alright, so we’ll start out with the obvious, like many people who have bought and read this book, I watch Jenna Moreci’s YouTube channel. I enjoy her content and I think she has some good tips and tricks, especially for those who are looking to eventually self publish. So, to show my support and appreciation, I decided to purchase Moreci’s second novel, The Savior’s Champion. I probably expected a little too much, if I’m being honest. But, I’d spent so much time watching Moreci’s videos that I figured there was no way I wouldn’t enjoy this novel, even if romance isn’t exactly my style.
Boy howdy, I was in for some disappointment. I still like Jenna Moreci’s videos and I’ll continue to support her, because I think she does great things for the writing community, but I’ve learned not to expect too much from my idols. Let’s break down some of my main problems with this book:
The Beginning (the Prologue - just call it the Prologue. I hate that authors try to put a different title on prologues. Though, to be fair, I also hate prologues. They’re a waste of everyone’s time - is a complete waste. It’s unnecessary and does nothing to add to the story. It only brought me more questions. Why was the Savior running through the streets? Later in the story, the Savior has an entire pose of women. Where’s the first Savior’s pose? Why does no one else know she’s in danger? I think it would have been far more effective just to throw us in with Tobias and let us know what happened to the previous Savior during the story. ALSO - and this really made me angry because Moreci has so many videos in which she yells out other writers for doing unrealistic shit in action - it doesn’t take seeing your own blood to realize that you throat has been slit. I feel like you realize that pretty quickly.
To be fair, this one might just be a personal pet peeve but I hated the capitalization of any word referring to the Savior. Like, I get it, it’s like how some people capitalize the word he when they’re referring to god. The Savior = God (but, like does she? Because they pretty clearly talk about a god in the story - saying “God” pretty frequently. So, is the Savior a god? I don’t know. You don’t know. BECAUSE THEIR RELIGIOUS SYSTEM IS NEVER EXPLAINED). That being said, the constant capitalizations dragged me straight out of the story. Especially when they were addressing Cosmia with “you”. It’s just jarring. But again, that may just be a personal pet peeve.
The repetition. Look, I get it. Moreci wants us to know that Tobias has no plans to enter the Sovereign's Tournament. But she didn’t need to beat us over the head with him constantly telling himself and everyone else that he hates it. Instead of telling others and thinking about how much he angstily hates the Savior and her father’s competition, Tobias could - I dunno - do something useful. Not be annoying so that I actually care about his character. And, speaking of beating people over the head, if I ever read the word “apologies” again, I’ll beat myself over the head. Saying “sorry” instead of “apologies” every once in a while is okay. I promise. I’m also a fantasy writer. No one’s going to yell at you for using more than one word to convey something, Moreci. Trust me. Same thing with the insults. I get that this is an adult book, but that doesn’t mean “bitch”, “cunt”, and “cock” need to be your only insults. You’ve got different people from different cultures from all over in this book and they all use those three insults? Look in other languages and pull from that. In my research (and I could be wrong because internet), I’ve found that in German, it isn’t uncommon to tell people “lick me” when translated literally, but comparatively, it would be “bite me”. Different cultures, different ways to say things.
Alright, to get oddly specific, in Chapter 2, near the end, this really frustrating thing happens. Tobias thinks he and other competitors would get time to train before the tournament begins and honestly, that would have been a great idea from a plot standpoint. Like take the Savior out of the mix for the first half of the plot and actually let us get to know these guys. Let Lelia keep sneaking down to play doctor so that we can get to see their relationship develop because a month? Really? I’m sorry, Moreci says she hates insta love, but what do you think this is girlfriend? People don’t fall in love in a month. They fall in like. I’ve been dating my bf for a month (known him for longer) and I ain’t in love, ya’ll. And, if we'd gotten to know these guys better, I might have cared when they died.
The Challenges. I felt so cheated because I thought I was going to get some awesome Indiana Jones/Uncharted shit in here. The Labyrinth is supposed to be this big, scary test of endurance, strength and intelligence and yet it has the answers literally written out on the walls. Am I really supposed to believe that Tobias is smart and resourceful when in reality he’s just not blind?
That plot twist. Look, I’m not going to bitch that much about the plot twist being obvious. I’ve been reading for a long time and the twists is a classic trope in this kind of story. I will complain that Tobias is stupid. … And so is Lelia. Moreci talks a big game about healthy relationships, but those tend to include communication. Something these characters are determined to ignore. Side note, just because these two are the only characters halfway decent to each other doesn’t mean they have any chemistry. This relationship is the definition of meh. Which, I think is because I had a meh attitude towards both of these characters. Tobias was an annoying goody-goody, pure heart protagonist who whined about the situation he agreed to put himself into - knowing full well what it was. Lelia reminds me of some of my writing friend’s poorly fleshed out female protagonist from our teenage years - fully able to take care of herself until the plot demands it and quick witted and calm until she needs to be a giggling school girl for her new boy toy. The only relationship I vaguely rooted for was Enzo and Zander and we all know how that one turned out.
And that relationship brings me to this. Allow me, as a very bixexual woman, to tell you about the two most problematic quotes (in my mind) in this entire book:
1. “Yes, pretty. lIke women, but men.” - Enzo, a gay ass man who likes men, not woman, page 295, Chapter 15 “The Dog”.
Now, some of you are thinking: "But Blair, he’s saying he likes attractive, thin men". And to you I say, pull your head out of your ass. What just came out of this gay man’s gay mouth was “I like men that remind me of women”. I have a lot of words for this quote. They all have for letters and would be beeped out on national television. Because, I can tell you, as a VERY bisexual woman, with some VERY gay/lesbian friends, that we don’t say shit like that. We don’t compare sexes guys. I don’t look at a buff girl and think “I like her because she looks like a man”. Fuck you. Do you know what being gay means? NOT THIS.
2.“Do we have time for a little fun? I’ve always enjoyed his face.” … “Come on, it can be part of the torture. I’ll fuck him bloody.” - Kaleo, the bisexul villain. Page 522, Chapter 27 “The Culmination”.
*clears throat* OH FUCK YOU! I don’t know what the fuck is up with writers and making their bi villians rape happy, but it needs to stop. Shockingly, us bis have more to do than think about all the sex we’re going to have with everyone because we’re attracted to both sexes so we MUST want to sleep with everyone. FUCK YOU. On another tangent, why do bi/gay people always have to be attracted to the story’s mc? I can guarantee that your character isn’t all that. And, shockingly, gay people aren’t attracted to everyone of the same sex they meet. Maybe I’m the only person having a problem with these moments. *Glances at the review section* NOPE. Not just me. Okay good. Jenna Moreci, I get you’re straight, I know you want diversity in your book to keep from getting torn apart by sjw, but on behalf of myself (and probably a few more members of the LGTBQ+ community)... IF YOU CAN’T WRITE THESE CHARACTERS WITH SOME UNDERSTANDING AND RESPECT, DON’T WRITE THEM!
*Deep breath in*
*Deep breath out*
Alright, my rants have finished. This has already gone on way longer than I thought it would. There’s several other problematic things in this book, Pippa (seriously? This is how we’re handling this character? Seriously, Moreci?), the most beautiful woman in the world being the whitest bitch you know (...do I really have to comment on that?), and several other things I noticed but don’t feel I have the background or knowledge to comment on. So I’ll leave that to those who know better.
The Savior’s Champion certainly wasn’t the worst book I’ve ever read but it is far from the best. Which is disappointing to say the least. As an aspiring writer who’s been watching Moreci’s videos for some time now, I think I have the right to be pretty disgusted. With a bloated storyline and forgettable characters, The Savior’s Champion will make its way to my library’s shelf and await the next poor soul intrigued by an interesting premise that’s wasted.
May 19, 2018
Oh, where to even begin.....
I'm giving this book two stars for its only pros in my opinion: it was a fast-paced read, and the second half of the story was entertaining.
Aside from that, I really found a lot lacking in TSC. I love Jenna's Youtube vids, but this is my honest opinion as someone who reads tons of YA.....
Jenna is a new writer, and while I congratulate her on this novel being a huge step up from Eve, there are still a lot of new writer mistakes in this book. The dialogue is often really clunky and not believable - i.e. "nobody ever talks like this" type moments. The diction is confused - one moment the characters are swearing like sailors, the next moment they're WAY too formal, and the next moment after that, they're saying something that belongs more in the modern world than in the realm of the story. This is standard new writer's inconsistency. There are also a lot of problems with cliches, and I kind of had to stop a few times in the book and laugh because some of the narrative sentences were so out there they really detracted from the experience. I struggled reading TSC, I'm not going to lie. But it was still a fast read for what it was.
There's also a thing that new writers do that drives me nuts where they refer to a character by their title rather than by their name. I.e. "The architect picked up the pen," instead of "Brad picked up the pen." When this shows up too often, it's a huge, glaring sign that the writer is a newbie, and in TSC - guess what! We have 20 men, and some other main characters, which have their "Laurels," and are constantly referred to by both their laurels and their names - which also makes it really, really confusing for half the book.
The Characters - Tobias was really boring. Leila was just... well, she was alright. Everyone else felt like... a caricature? Jenna goes off in one of her videos about having the Evil Bad Guy be complicated and not just PURE EVIL BAD GUY, but she goes against her own advice and just makes Brontes the evil dickass overlord who gets zero development except for how much of an asshole he is. Same for the 3 Beasts in the tournament. There's just a lack of complexity in characterization. Don't even get me started on Pippa's check mark in the "representation" department - I'm kind of sour about that one.
The Romance - I thought the chemistry was forced and absent until 2/3 of the way through the book. I think the author tried to avoid "instalove" accusations by making her bitch out Tobias on their first meeting, but it really still counts as instalove if every meeting after that just makes it increasingly obvious that they're destined to be together. And honestly, for me, instalove scenarios aren't as bad as contrived bitchouts.
The 'Big Plot Twist' - Sadly, as soon as we met 'The Savior,' I pretty much guessed the Big Reveal. I think the story was designed for readers to slowly pick up on it and eventually guess before the Big Reveal happens, but I don't think Jenna was trying to get us guessing literally as soon as we met the character. But it was just really obvious to me - I think the story was just too simplistic to adequately distract us from the obvious "twist."
The World Building - pretty much nonexistent. I walked away from this book knowing nothing about the world, people, culture, food, art, whatever.... except that it's some weird hyper-Americanized version of Ancient Greece. Extremely bland worldbuilding. I know Jenna admits she's not good ad writing descriptions, but I really, really found the whole thing lacking.
The Plot - It's basically what you get if The Bachelorette met The Gladiator and had a lovechild that got all of their worst traits. Extremely linear for half the book (is that a labyrinth, or a tunnel?). It improves a little once they're out of the tunnel, but becomes predictable. And it's too LONG. This book could have been at least 200 pages shorter.
Inconsistencies - There were so many things that really shouldn't have been answered that weren't. Why did The Sovereign The ending was just.... sudden. And not really... idk, fulfilling? I assume it's a setup for another book, and the cliffhanger is fine, but the way it left off really didn't do it for me.
Other stuff:
Honestly? I think this book was really confused. It didn't know whether it was a gritty, gory dark fantasy, or an overly gushy, hyper-sentimental teenage romance. And to be quite honest - the vicious swearing got really old after a while. It was okay for a second, but then it really started to detract from the story. I really don't need to read the word "cock" quite so many times. I know Jenna has a thing for foul language in her YouTube vids, but after a while reading the book it became really tedious and juvenile, and I'm gonna see it differently when I watch her videos too.
There was also really.... nothing new in this book. Homophobia? Check. Toxic masculinity? Check. But ultimately the book's treatment of the character is basically: "that kind of behavior is vile, but to be expected from men of the asshole variety." I didn't really walk away with any new perspectives or anything that adds to that conversation except Meh much?
I'm giving this book two stars for its only pros in my opinion: it was a fast-paced read, and the second half of the story was entertaining.
Aside from that, I really found a lot lacking in TSC. I love Jenna's Youtube vids, but this is my honest opinion as someone who reads tons of YA.....
Jenna is a new writer, and while I congratulate her on this novel being a huge step up from Eve, there are still a lot of new writer mistakes in this book. The dialogue is often really clunky and not believable - i.e. "nobody ever talks like this" type moments. The diction is confused - one moment the characters are swearing like sailors, the next moment they're WAY too formal, and the next moment after that, they're saying something that belongs more in the modern world than in the realm of the story. This is standard new writer's inconsistency. There are also a lot of problems with cliches, and I kind of had to stop a few times in the book and laugh because some of the narrative sentences were so out there they really detracted from the experience. I struggled reading TSC, I'm not going to lie. But it was still a fast read for what it was.
There's also a thing that new writers do that drives me nuts where they refer to a character by their title rather than by their name. I.e. "The architect picked up the pen," instead of "Brad picked up the pen." When this shows up too often, it's a huge, glaring sign that the writer is a newbie, and in TSC - guess what! We have 20 men, and some other main characters, which have their "Laurels," and are constantly referred to by both their laurels and their names - which also makes it really, really confusing for half the book.
The Characters - Tobias was really boring. Leila was just... well, she was alright. Everyone else felt like... a caricature? Jenna goes off in one of her videos about having the Evil Bad Guy be complicated and not just PURE EVIL BAD GUY, but she goes against her own advice and just makes Brontes the evil dickass overlord who gets zero development except for how much of an asshole he is. Same for the 3 Beasts in the tournament. There's just a lack of complexity in characterization. Don't even get me started on Pippa's check mark in the "representation" department - I'm kind of sour about that one.
The Romance - I thought the chemistry was forced and absent until 2/3 of the way through the book. I think the author tried to avoid "instalove" accusations by making her bitch out Tobias on their first meeting, but it really still counts as instalove if every meeting after that just makes it increasingly obvious that they're destined to be together. And honestly, for me, instalove scenarios aren't as bad as contrived bitchouts.
The 'Big Plot Twist' - Sadly, as soon as we met 'The Savior,' I pretty much guessed the Big Reveal. I think the story was designed for readers to slowly pick up on it and eventually guess before the Big Reveal happens, but I don't think Jenna was trying to get us guessing literally as soon as we met the character. But it was just really obvious to me - I think the story was just too simplistic to adequately distract us from the obvious "twist."
The World Building - pretty much nonexistent. I walked away from this book knowing nothing about the world, people, culture, food, art, whatever.... except that it's some weird hyper-Americanized version of Ancient Greece. Extremely bland worldbuilding. I know Jenna admits she's not good ad writing descriptions, but I really, really found the whole thing lacking.
The Plot - It's basically what you get if The Bachelorette met The Gladiator and had a lovechild that got all of their worst traits. Extremely linear for half the book (is that a labyrinth, or a tunnel?). It improves a little once they're out of the tunnel, but becomes predictable. And it's too LONG. This book could have been at least 200 pages shorter.
Inconsistencies - There were so many things that really shouldn't have been answered that weren't. Why did The Sovereign The ending was just.... sudden. And not really... idk, fulfilling? I assume it's a setup for another book, and the cliffhanger is fine, but the way it left off really didn't do it for me.
Other stuff:
Honestly? I think this book was really confused. It didn't know whether it was a gritty, gory dark fantasy, or an overly gushy, hyper-sentimental teenage romance. And to be quite honest - the vicious swearing got really old after a while. It was okay for a second, but then it really started to detract from the story. I really don't need to read the word "cock" quite so many times. I know Jenna has a thing for foul language in her YouTube vids, but after a while reading the book it became really tedious and juvenile, and I'm gonna see it differently when I watch her videos too.
There was also really.... nothing new in this book. Homophobia? Check. Toxic masculinity? Check. But ultimately the book's treatment of the character is basically: "that kind of behavior is vile, but to be expected from men of the asshole variety." I didn't really walk away with any new perspectives or anything that adds to that conversation except Meh much?
August 4, 2020
I was promised romance, adventure, suspense, diverse representation, epic fight scenes, and bloodbaths. This book freakin' delivered.
I received a free ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review. Honestly? I loved every second of it. I don't typically read dark fantasy like this, usually going for lighter YA Fantasy reads, but I found this book really refreshing. Moreci perfectly mixed violence, gore, and profanity with really tender, sweet moments between characters. And I'm not even just talking about the romance. The characters were vivid, and their interactions felt real. Some of the characters were total sweethearts, while others were straight up dicks. Most, though, strayed in the middle of the curve, blending a gentle human innocence with more profane characteristics. Much of the book sticks with this dichotomy.
You see this with Tobias, our creative but fierce protagonist and also his love interest, the murderous yet gentle Leila. Their relationship colors the page in such a realistic yet swoon-worthy romance. I mean, it's hard not to fall in love with Tobias, he's kind of amazing, but Leila is his perfect counterpart. Their romance was so beautiful to read (and sexy, tbh).
This story felt character-driven given the diverse, rounded characters that Moreci created, but the plot is strong as well. Tobias competes in a tournament death-match to win the hand of his magical queen, but he accidentally falls for her sister, Leila, instead. The challenges were a delight to read, and even if the violence kind of disturbed me sometimes I was really invested in the story (hint: don't get too attached to anyone). There is a pretty severe plot twist at the end, however I figured out what this twist would be very early on. This didn't reduce my enjoyment, though. I felt smart for putting the pieces together so soon, but I won't say more for sake of spoilers. The tournament itself was the perfect antithesis of the romantic plotline--violent, antiquated, and tragic versus sweet, tender, and modern. Overall, it was super fun to read.
Things to watch out for: a lot of foul language, gruesome violence, death (obvi), mildly explicit sexual encounters, sexual harassment, and some weird capitalization (the Savior's pronouns are always capitalized because She is basically a Goddess).
Read this book if you want: a swoon-worthy romance, blood & guts, epic fight scenes, diverse representation (including race, sexuality, mental/physical disabilities), suspenseful pacing, and a hard-on for Tobias.
Overall, this book was a really fun romantic fantasy adventure, heavy on the fight scenes and romance. It was a blend of darker and lighter elements, really showcasing that people can be both sweet and tough. Sort of like a peach.
edit: reposted because GR decided to be cute and delete it
I received a free ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review. Honestly? I loved every second of it. I don't typically read dark fantasy like this, usually going for lighter YA Fantasy reads, but I found this book really refreshing. Moreci perfectly mixed violence, gore, and profanity with really tender, sweet moments between characters. And I'm not even just talking about the romance. The characters were vivid, and their interactions felt real. Some of the characters were total sweethearts, while others were straight up dicks. Most, though, strayed in the middle of the curve, blending a gentle human innocence with more profane characteristics. Much of the book sticks with this dichotomy.
You see this with Tobias, our creative but fierce protagonist and also his love interest, the murderous yet gentle Leila. Their relationship colors the page in such a realistic yet swoon-worthy romance. I mean, it's hard not to fall in love with Tobias, he's kind of amazing, but Leila is his perfect counterpart. Their romance was so beautiful to read (and sexy, tbh).
This story felt character-driven given the diverse, rounded characters that Moreci created, but the plot is strong as well. Tobias competes in a tournament death-match to win the hand of his magical queen, but he accidentally falls for her sister, Leila, instead. The challenges were a delight to read, and even if the violence kind of disturbed me sometimes I was really invested in the story (hint: don't get too attached to anyone). There is a pretty severe plot twist at the end, however I figured out what this twist would be very early on. This didn't reduce my enjoyment, though. I felt smart for putting the pieces together so soon, but I won't say more for sake of spoilers. The tournament itself was the perfect antithesis of the romantic plotline--violent, antiquated, and tragic versus sweet, tender, and modern. Overall, it was super fun to read.
Things to watch out for: a lot of foul language, gruesome violence, death (obvi), mildly explicit sexual encounters, sexual harassment, and some weird capitalization (the Savior's pronouns are always capitalized because She is basically a Goddess).
Read this book if you want: a swoon-worthy romance, blood & guts, epic fight scenes, diverse representation (including race, sexuality, mental/physical disabilities), suspenseful pacing, and a hard-on for Tobias.
Overall, this book was a really fun romantic fantasy adventure, heavy on the fight scenes and romance. It was a blend of darker and lighter elements, really showcasing that people can be both sweet and tough. Sort of like a peach.
edit: reposted because GR decided to be cute and delete it
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