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A review by marie_thereadingotter
To Kill a Queen by Nancy Uliano
Did not finish book.
DNF 30%
I received this book from NetGalley for review.
I'm honestly pretty bummed. This had all the makings to be a really good, if not great book. But for me the narrative choice not solely follow the character who is supposed to be the MC, but to tell it in third person on top of it made things feel a little detached for me. It was really hard for me to connect with any of the characters. Some of the dialog, to how things were described felt and sounded too real-world and modern at times and for me it took me out of the story a little. One of the biggest narrative issues I had was that seemingly nobody cared that the crowned princess, Alana, went missing some-odd years ago. From how things were told, there wasn't any full-scale investigation or search for her. She went "missing", and everybody was all "well, I guess Raine is the Crowned princess now, moving on with life." It just didn't sound realistic to me.
Raine was a decent character, but to the point where I got, there wasn't anything special about her. Other characters, Kirin mostly, says that "the people love and respect her." but we never get to see this before she goes on her journey.
Speaking of Kirin, he was also pretty flat for me. I saw nothing about him that made him a compelling love interest for Raine. It's alluded that he did some questionable stuff while training to be a mage and it's unclear how long he was gone, how old he was when he left and how long it had been since he got back from his training. There was also a little explained as to why the King distrusted magic, and why exactly Kirin was allowed to stay.
This was the biggest issue, too much was focused on Kirin and not on Raine, the MC.
Where I left off, they had met some elf lady, assassin... or something, Thora. She hits on Raine, gets both Kirin and Raine arrested for talking to her. She even had a POV segment in a chapter, I have no idea why, hopefully it wasn't pointless. I will never know since I DNF'd before any more was explained. But any POV for her feels wasted when more time could have been given making Raine a more compelling MC.
I'm mostly bummed by this book than anything, it has the skeleton of a great story, but it for me, it needs a lot more polishing and rounding out the MC to make her more compelling early on.
I received this book from NetGalley for review.
I'm honestly pretty bummed. This had all the makings to be a really good, if not great book. But for me the narrative choice not solely follow the character who is supposed to be the MC, but to tell it in third person on top of it made things feel a little detached for me. It was really hard for me to connect with any of the characters. Some of the dialog, to how things were described felt and sounded too real-world and modern at times and for me it took me out of the story a little. One of the biggest narrative issues I had was that seemingly nobody cared that the crowned princess, Alana, went missing some-odd years ago. From how things were told, there wasn't any full-scale investigation or search for her. She went "missing", and everybody was all "well, I guess Raine is the Crowned princess now, moving on with life." It just didn't sound realistic to me.
Raine was a decent character, but to the point where I got, there wasn't anything special about her. Other characters, Kirin mostly, says that "the people love and respect her." but we never get to see this before she goes on her journey.
Speaking of Kirin, he was also pretty flat for me. I saw nothing about him that made him a compelling love interest for Raine. It's alluded that he did some questionable stuff while training to be a mage and it's unclear how long he was gone, how old he was when he left and how long it had been since he got back from his training. There was also a little explained as to why the King distrusted magic, and why exactly Kirin was allowed to stay.
This was the biggest issue, too much was focused on Kirin and not on Raine, the MC.
Where I left off, they had met some elf lady, assassin... or something, Thora. She hits on Raine, gets both Kirin and Raine arrested for talking to her. She even had a POV segment in a chapter, I have no idea why, hopefully it wasn't pointless. I will never know since I DNF'd before any more was explained. But any POV for her feels wasted when more time could have been given making Raine a more compelling MC.
I'm mostly bummed by this book than anything, it has the skeleton of a great story, but it for me, it needs a lot more polishing and rounding out the MC to make her more compelling early on.