*whispers* I did not like this one...

WHY!

So I have a few thoughts and I had this whole internal monologue ready. But I forgot half of them. So here are a few thing I do remember. WARNING: I will go on tangents.
- Where are the women? This was one of the biggest problem I had with the story. There are no women. Only mentioned in passing. And then they are either: A wife and mostly with another wife (multiple wives for one men...yeah.. no), a sacrifice (because what else are we good for right?), or they are 'better than men for certain things' and that kind of nonsens.

Honestly that shit bothers me. Because NO gender is better than the other. And thinking like that results in madonna versus the whore thingies and that men show no emotions. It's ridonkulous. While that was not totally the case here it did seem that only men were allowed to be an actual person while the woman were only there to make more babies. Also if women were better at some things... Why are there only men in power? (I mean in the story) Why is that?

- The worldbuilding. Look I got confused... Like multiple times. I don't see myself as a dummy.. on my good days. But this shit was confusing. Or more like it was too much. I got the feeling the author was so happy with all the cool things she (I'm assuming she is a woman purely based on the name on the cover) thought of she just kept on using more and more. And to be honest all the things are pretty cool. But it was a bit much.

- Plot versus character. Normally I don't really care if authors go for plot building or for character building. I'm in it for the story. But I recently read a thread on which people prefer more and it got me to think a bit more about this. It felt like... again too much good ideas and not enough fleshing out of one.

A few points that came to mind. I do remember thinking about why women write about gay men but 'forget' to write about gay women but that's a whole other discussion.

I will read the next book in the series (especially since I already have it) because Megan Derr is an amazing writer and I like her stories dammit. I just a bit bummed that this one did not work for me..

( )

I like a story with relationship development: this had none.

I like a story with a plot that makes sense: some of the turns here were difficult to accept in context.

I like a story that isn't anticlimactic: the trope of "this being is so powerful, there's no way to beat him, but oh look we just beat him by doing next to nothing" bores me.

This still manages to get two stars from me, though, because the mechanics of the writing are solid. The dialogue and the descriptions are all good. It's just the overall plot that doesn't work for me at all. ( )

I do love Megan Derr's books. [b:The Kria|11116507|Prisoner (Kria, #1)|Megan Derr|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1302907046s/11116507.jpg|3426258] books are forever my favorites and so is [b:The Infinitum Government Series|12478802|Kidnapped (The Infinitum Government, #1)|Megan Derr|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1316517110s/12478802.jpg|17463261].
This, however, is turning into pure horror: zombies, demons, flying spiders that are actually angels; there is barely enough interaction between gay protagonists to make it into m/m romance category.
If I knew differently going in, if maybe I read the tags and warnings and reviews, I would have been prepared better.

Keep in mind tho, that it's mostly me, not the book, because:
- Horror bores me to tears.
- Too many characters confuse me, I can never recall anyone beyond the 4-5 major-ish characters, MCs often included. Here we have 15 princes, plus a castle full of people, plus various demons-gods-angels-village people.
- Pain, pain and more pain. Don't get me wrong, I love it when an author makes their characters suffer. [b:Cethe|7186426|Cethe|Becca Abbott|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327994741s/7186426.jpg|7721916] is Dah Book. But this was too much even for me. In the end I simply stopped caring about boys wounds, headaches, scrapes or soul wrenching ache for each other.

And so this is how it went:

ME: - Book, let me love you!
BOOK: - Stop talking. I am a busy book. I have all these characters to inflict pain upon.
ME: - But Book....
BOOK: - Bugger off or start helping!

So there we were, stuck together for a few days. And guess what? We made a fine team and successfully inflicted pain left and right.... and right and left... and everywhere in between.



PS I just made to 10% of book two. Chronologically, it should be book one. Logically, so far at least, it should be book one as well. I don't know, maybe it will make sense later. ( )

Yay, new serial - happy so far