pre-reading
probs one of my most anticipated releases of the year, here's hoping we get an agatha and tedros epilogue
this might be one of my most disappointing reads of the year. i'm sad! my love for sge is well documented on goodreads, it's one of my favourite series ever. this could have been great! but alas, this novel suffers from several major issues.
firstly, the characters. there were too many trying to share the spotlight. aladdin was positioned as the main character before being shafted in the other 2/3 of the book! marialena was almost completely useless, except to bring back the sader name. the pirate captain was also useless. and with the characters we got, they were hardly developed! part of the strength of the series is how chainani writes characters. from sophie to hester to agatha, their voices are unique and distinct and full of life. here, an attempt is made for rhian, rafal, and hook, but barely for the other characters. aladdin, marialena, hephaestus, kyma, they all felt bland and underdeveloped (kyma was less bad, interesting to see her as a sort of pre-agatha who doesn't do anything to stop good's corruptness). rhian, rafal and james were better developed as characters, with more distinctive voices, however their development suffers from the second problem.
the length. this book could have done with another 100 pages, easily. that would have allowed for more character development, expansion on certain topics, etc. because of this book's short length, everything felt very rushed and wasn't given the proper time to breathe. this means the pacing was very off, and often very disjointed from section to section.
the ending. the ending? i'm sorry, that sort of reveal shouldn't be relegated to the last three pages? i'm confused. this feels like a cliff-hanger ending that chainani likes to use, except i'm pretty sure there won't be a sequel to this. so what gives?
it's not like this book was horrible. i liked returning to this world and seeing the evolution of the school. rhian and rafal being disaster gays was hilarious and not what i expected from this book (take a shot every time rhian gets flustered or blushes around a hot guy in the novel or every time rafal mentions james) but i absolutely loved it. there were fun comedic moments, usually between the twins, who had a lovely relationship to read about (very much parallels to agatha and sophie). watching rafal and rhian slowly turn to each other's sides was honestly very compelling, as they play separate chess games against each other.
did this book need to be written? i honestly don't think so. while kind of fun, we didn't need to see this story and unfortunately it does little to lift the series even higher in my books. while i am still a fan of chainani's works, this just wasn't it for me, disappointingly.