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A review by chaptersofmads
This Ends in Embers by Kamilah Cole
3.0
ARC provided via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions expressed are my own.
last read of the year completed!!
Unique and thought-provoking, This Ends in Embers solidifies the Divine Traitors duology's place as a refreshing presence in YA.
To prepare for writing this review, I went and reread my review for the first book and was pretty surprised to see that my feelings on both books were almost identical. I still really appreciated the world-building and the conversations on generational trauma and the costs of war.
During this book, we follow Faron and Elara as they are separated due to circumstance and the rising war. Because of this, the world and the politics got to be expanded. We learn more about the history of their world, the dragons, the gods, and how the general public views the sisters'.
However, for me personally, this particular installment fell quite flat.
I found much of the book to be redundant and over-dramatized, with powerful sentences being repeated so many times they began to lose their meaning. The sisters still both acted incredibly young, which was something I struggled with in book 1. This is YA, the characters are meant to be young. I know that. But when you have characters that have been stripped of their childhood and forced into these adult roles, it's hard to believe that they'd still be behaving this way.
This also fell into the unfortunate YA habit of feeling very... teachy? Sometimes, authors write YA characters as an adult writing teenagers (rather than putting themselves into the mind of the character), filled with all of the lessons they want to get across and the encouragement they want to give to young people. Which is beautiful and admirable! But it doesn't feel like these characters learning those lessons on their own, it feels like the author is telling me to get my confidence back and not to kill.
I also found this a bit confusing, but I'm not counting that against the book. I've been especially tired this year and I'm more than willing to admit that might have been user error. I would recommend rereading So Let Them Burn before jumping into this one, if you need a refresher.
Overall, I stand by the fact that this duology deserves all the hype and praise it's gotten (and more!) Kamilah Cole did something incredibly interesting with what could have been a very basic premise.
While this book didn't entirely work for me, I definitely recommend it to people that love YA fantasy (+ don't mind YA that reads incredibly young) and want to read something that doesn't feel like everything else.
last read of the year completed!!
Unique and thought-provoking, This Ends in Embers solidifies the Divine Traitors duology's place as a refreshing presence in YA.
To prepare for writing this review, I went and reread my review for the first book and was pretty surprised to see that my feelings on both books were almost identical. I still really appreciated the world-building and the conversations on generational trauma and the costs of war.
During this book, we follow Faron and Elara as they are separated due to circumstance and the rising war. Because of this, the world and the politics got to be expanded. We learn more about the history of their world, the dragons, the gods, and how the general public views the sisters'.
However, for me personally, this particular installment fell quite flat.
I found much of the book to be redundant and over-dramatized, with powerful sentences being repeated so many times they began to lose their meaning. The sisters still both acted incredibly young, which was something I struggled with in book 1. This is YA, the characters are meant to be young. I know that. But when you have characters that have been stripped of their childhood and forced into these adult roles, it's hard to believe that they'd still be behaving this way.
This also fell into the unfortunate YA habit of feeling very... teachy? Sometimes, authors write YA characters as an adult writing teenagers (rather than putting themselves into the mind of the character), filled with all of the lessons they want to get across and the encouragement they want to give to young people. Which is beautiful and admirable! But it doesn't feel like these characters learning those lessons on their own, it feels like the author is telling me to get my confidence back and not to kill.
I also found this a bit confusing, but I'm not counting that against the book. I've been especially tired this year and I'm more than willing to admit that might have been user error. I would recommend rereading So Let Them Burn before jumping into this one, if you need a refresher.
Overall, I stand by the fact that this duology deserves all the hype and praise it's gotten (and more!) Kamilah Cole did something incredibly interesting with what could have been a very basic premise.
While this book didn't entirely work for me, I definitely recommend it to people that love YA fantasy (+ don't mind YA that reads incredibly young) and want to read something that doesn't feel like everything else.