GENRE: Adult Fantasy
LENGTH: 388 pages
PLOT
Princess Vienna was framed for the murder of her infant brother by her twin sister, the wicked Vaunell. Vienna is cast out and travels to the islands known as the Constellations where she begins a new life. Meanwhile, Vaunell plots her assassination.
CHARACTERS
Vienna is not a very strong protagonist. She’s physically capable and a good friend, but she lacks motivation. She doesn’t want to rule and so she’s content to let her sister, whom she knows is cruel, become the new heir. It’s her friends who have to convince her that she should actually care enough to save her people. Someone who is wrongfully cast out, someone who genuinely cares for her people, wouldn’t behave the way she does.
Vaunell is our antagonist and she has sociopathic tendencies. I found her character to be more interesting than Vienna because, while I wasn’t rooting for her to succeed and was disturbed by her behavior, she at least had a vision. She was proactive – even if it was for the wrong reasons. One thing I would have liked to see be different about her is for her to have been a better actress. If she put on a convincing portrayal of a caring daughter, sister, and princess that would make more sense. The way she acts there is no plausible way that no one suspected her.
The other important characters n the story are the kids Vienna meets in the Constellations who become her found family. They are Ruvo, Teshan, Thistle, Flek, and Cricket. To be honest, the only one who stood out at first was Thistle. When they were first introduced they all sort of blended together as being generically overly friendly. As the book continues their individual personalities began to shine through more, though, and I grew fond of them all.
WRITING
The novel is told primarily through the third person perspectives of Vienna and Vaunell. Occasionally the narrative will break from them for a few sentences to focus on a side character. I would personally remove these instances of the side characters’ POVs because they disrupt the flow of the story. I do, however, really like getting both the protagonist’s and the antagonist’s perspectives. That’s something you don’t see a lot.
The writing overall is OK. Zhao’s main weakness is that she is too repetitive. For instance, the adjective weakly is used to describe almost everything the characters do all the time to the point it started to not feel like a real word anymore. The world building, on the other hand, was one of the better parts of the novel. There are multiple kingdoms either visited or mentioned and each had their own distinct culture. Also, the novel’s strongest point is the ending which is action packed and emotional and a great way to get readers excited for volume 2.
Vienna’s story line is surprisingly rather boring. She’s pretty stagnant until a good chunk of the way through the novel. As mentioned above, Vaunell is the character who is more interesting to follow as she pushes the story forward.
Despite the main characters being ages 14-17 throughout this novel this is most definitely an adult NOT a YA novel due to its content. The author mentions trigger warnings for domestic violence, child murder, rape, and cannibalism. She leaves out a huge one, though. There is a character who talks about suicide and goes on for an excessive amount of time about it. He presents a bleak narrative telling another character that it’s possible she is unloved, alone, and that there is no light/hope. As someone who struggles with mental illness I was very perturbed by this.
FINAL THOUGHTS
This book sounded like it had everything I could ever want in a fantasy which is why I picked it up. It's indie published and it most definitely could have benefited from an editor. The concept is wonderful and the narrative style unique, but I had too many issues with it to give it anything more than the rating I have – which, to be honest, feels generous. If you go on Goodreads you’ll see my opinion is the minority. I encourage you to go check out those reviews as well. I don’t want to sound like I’m dogging on indie authors. I think Zhao has a lot of potential, it’s just that traditional publishing offers a lot of resources an indie author may not have access to and I think that shows a little bit here.
FINAL RATING: 3⭐️
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