I'm kind of frustrated with this book. I almost gave up on it after the first few chapters of this willfully ignorant Sylvie who is like, I MUST JOIN THE COURT, I WILL FINALLY BELONG as if she was expecting some sort of Disney ending. But I kept reading, so here we are with a book review instead of an unreadable review. I'm just mad at the whiny, "I'm something MORE than everyone else and this ONE place within the kingdom is where I should go to BELONG. Screw all these other people who have taken care of me or who have warned me."
Hmph.
I also got my hands on an advanced reader's copy even though I think book 2 is about to published sometime soon, but undoubtedly there will be some differences between the version I read and the published edition.
An amazon summary, "Sylvie has always known she deserves more. Out in the permanent twilight of the Dusklands, her guardians called her power to create illusions a curse. But Sylvie knows it gives her a place in Coeur d'Or, the palais of the Amber Empress and her highborn legacies.
So Sylvie sets off toward the Amber City, a glittering jewel under a sun that never sets, to take what is hers.
But her hope for a better life is quickly dimmed. The empress invites her in only as part of a wicked wager among her powerful courtiers. Sylvie must assume a new name, Mirage, and begin to navigate secretive social circles and deadly games of intrigue in order to claim her spot. Soon it becomes apparent that nothing is as it appears and no one, including her cruel yet captivating sponsor, Sunder, will answer her questions. As Mirage strives to seize what should be her rightful place, she'll have to consider whether it is worth the price she must pay." AMAZON LINK OF JUSTICE
Slyvie has fled the convent of nuns to run across the continent where the moon doesn't shine but the sun always does. On her run across the continent, she's actually traveling with a caravan. The caravan leader's son was like, "heyyyyyyy, come with us because I'm cool, and you seem like you can't fend for yourself and I admire your spirit." And Slyvie was like, "Cool! I'm still going to leave you though once we reach the crazy people." So now we've got too many freaking chapters of them wandering around in this like dessert-ish landscape, I'm not really sure, it doesn't matter because I hated all of those chapters, they felt like they lasted forever.
So they get to court. Who cares. About everything before. Seriously. NO.
Anyways. They get to court. It turns out that Slyvie's powers aren't out of place (oh yeah, she has some kind of like illusion generation ability, plus she has an amulet from who knows where, she's an orphan). The court is full of interesting powers and of course court intrigue. So it turns out the Queen is kind of crazy and is like, "Yeah, you can be part of my court, but this other courtesan is going to train you how to be at court in a short amount of time. Hints of evilllllllllll"
So Slyvie is like, "Whoa second thoughts! ....Alright, I'm over it. Time to learn court and my powers! But some of these people seem evil to you?" Then she kind of wanders around, learns some stuff about court, then actually learns some stuff about court, and I'm done with this summary.
So, I hated that I had to get through the boring part of the book to get to the good part of the book, since the boring part of the book didn't really do enough of what it was probably meant to (show the actual destitute, awful condition of the country). But it didn't really. It was like, "look at this caravan. Yeah people are sad. ...moving on. Did you know we're going to the capital?"
Some of the powers were kind of cool, but the explanation behind powers was so weak. It wasn't really making sense, maybe it'll be explained in book 2. Or they don't care.
I'm just bitter. I liked it. I liked it overall. I'm just so bitter about the first part of the book. So bitter.
The middle of the book was so good, but the ending was like......repeat of the first part, in the sense of like bitter about it, but it was bad for different reasons, REASONS I AM ALSO BITTER ABOUT IT.
So I won't read book 2. Hopefully. In case it lures me in, I'm sorry in advance. Sometimes I can't help it.
....happy reading.
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