Dom scoffed. "I did not realise there was a competition for the worst personality," he crowed. - Dom, 2021, speaking my thoughts about these characters. I feel like it’s hard for me to rate this book. On one hand, the writing was astounding, the pacing well-done, and the plot intriguing. Yet what do you do when you’ve been handed a starter? A book that practically says “actually, it’s the next book you need to read,” combined with having some of the most unoriginal, bland and worst of all, generic, characters in YA. Hi, welcome to Unknown Reviews. Today's special is Realm Breaker. Can I please take your order? To start this review, we genuinely have what I think is a cracking plot. A group of five (supposedly seven) mismatched people have to band together and use their skills to defeat Taristan, a man determined to open portals into other worlds and unleash chaos, all under the bidding of He Who Waits. (A more fun summary: Portals!) I think portal stories make excellent reading. What happens when a normal world collides with somewhere completely chaotic, where monsters spill through doors and unimaginable evils are born. The potential is endless. Unfortunately (spoiler)…we don’t get that. Basically, in this book, Spindles are the name of the gates and our crew is trying to close them. About two or three are ever opened. We hear of some of the cool worlds behind them, but unfortunately, they’re never ever entered. Now, do they play a role in the story at time? Yes. Do they play exciting roles? For definite, perhaps the most exciting part in the book. Still, it’s not that I feel I’ve been undersold a concept, because I’m entirely confident Aveyard is going to go all out in the next book, it’s just I feel underwhelmed. There are a few worlds mentioned and they all sound pretty awesome: one with sea monsters, one which may just be full of gems, one that’s home to immortals called the Elders. Except…they’re not really explored. And when you take out the usage of the Spindles, you get, well, a book about a ragtag bunch of people travelling around to continent to find something. A.K.A a typical fantasy book. The worst part of this book was how generic it was, especially the characters. As I continued on through the story, I realised something about them was itching at me, something I couldn’t put my finger on. And then I worked out it was how uninspired and terrible they were. Characters summed up Domacridhan: Elder (Not fae, but a little fae. More respectful and less horny then S.J.M’s which is a win.). Lots of brooding, scowling, rumbling. Check. Corayne: “I want to explore the world. Ugh, I’m tired of life at home. Oh wow, I’m a chosen one, but how can that be, being the unremarkable girl that I am (I wrote this as a joke, but it turned out to be true, woah). I never saw this coming.” Check. Andry: “I’m a squire! I probably have trauma! I…I don’t have a personality.” Check. (Poor Andry, but this is painfully true). Sorasa: She is an emotionless assassin who has killed hundreds of men and can escape anything. We’ve never heard of that before, amiright? (Mandatory check? This isn't making sense anymore) Ridha: Wasn’t in the book, really. Irrelevant. (Check for the lols) If you read this, you might think “Hmm, the first four match up to the characters on the blurb, but is Ridha the sorceress?” Actually, no, she isn’t. She’s Dom’s cousin on the search for help to save the realm. The characters I’ve skilfully described are just the ones with the POV’s. So, that fifth member who is important enough to get a mention on the back isn’t worthy of a POV (yet). Actually, that’s another issue. The group? There’s actually supposed to be seven overall. Two join in later but they feel like very late additions even though I preferred them to our core five personality wise. Ridha has about four or five chapters, maybe even less, and they don’t contribute to the overall story? Once again, it’s a next book thing, but I can’t believe a character’s entire purpose was to set up events for the next one. There would’ve been no difference had she been in this story or not. Finally, our last POV was actually my favourite. Erida, the young queen of Galland, who rejects a typical arc seen in YA. While I didn’t love her, this was one of the elements I really want to praise Aveyard for. It was one of the only elements in the book that was unusual and I haven’t really seen it done in YA before. Out of the POV’s, she was likely the most intriguing. But now, I have to return and dissect as to why the characters were such a failure for me. Nothing is offensive about these characters. They’re not super angsty. They don’t make stupid decisions. Each of them seems to have a goal and an arc drawn out for them. I don’t even hate them. It’s more about what they stood for: Just a mishmash of clichés and a billion tropes. My description about Dom was accurate. He’s an elder, centuries old and while he doesn’t veer down the route of hitting on a twenty-year old, he’s just boring. He’s a character full of pride and justice. Whenever anyone makes a snarky remark, he scowls. He growls, glowers, glares, sours, snarls, you name it. And then I realised, I’ve seen this stiff-faced character a million times before and every time, they’re just as bad as before. I’ll compare him to Matthias from the SOC duology. I thought Matthias was the worst of the crows in the first book (great in Crooked Kingdom) and Dom’s personality is similar, but he’s actually less distinctive as a person. Please stop doing “gruff” and “honourable” characters if they can’t have a personality. Corayne. So bland. Of course, she sticks to the trope of the Farm Boy. You know the one where they discover they’re the key to a prophecy and leave their small town in search of a bigger world. What didn’t annoy me was Corayne being a bad character. She’s actually fine. I mean, she’s there, but she’s not unbearable or anything. It’s just it’s the way the other characters that view her that feels unearned. When an author has to keep beating you over the head with how special, brave, amazing this character is to everyone, it means those characters are none of those things. For example, at one stage Andry looks at Corayne, and for no reason thinks “brilliant, brave Corayne. And it’s like “where, Andry?” When has Corayne been brilliant or brave? When has been inspiring. Is this in the behind the scenes? Did she grow interesting during that time?” Or another example. Andry Trelland had seen enough spooked horses and hot-blooded squires in the training yard to know how to maintain some semblance of calm. Even if Corayne An-Amarat is more terrifying than either.” Long story short, Corayne plays the role of the everywoman. The self-insert with no discernible wit, personality, or talent so everyone can relate to her. I thoroughly believe it’s such a shame these characters dominate YA when they have the main role and then leave the book unremarkable. Andry is literally the male version of Corayne. Basically just a nice guy once again with no personality. Like, I don’t even know what his arc is or what purpose he actually serves the plot besides one thing. The funniest development in this book with Andry? His growing “relationship” with Corayne. Don’t be fooled, no romance happens in this book (another excellent decision by Aveyard), but growing attraction is there and it sucks. How is it the two driest characters become attracted to one another in a span of a few days with the most juvenile interactions. My friends, this is possible the driest romance in the history of YA romance and YOU HAVE READ YOUNG ADULT! YOU KNOW HOW BAD IT IS. Their interactions are actually even worse. “You’re the best hope we’ve got. That comes with consequences.” She huffed, crossing her arms over her chest. “Does one of them have to be a brooding immortal listening to my every heartbeat?” she growled, nodding at Dom only a few feet away.” “If it keeps you alive, yes.” Heat spread across his cheeks, a flush blooming over his brown skin.
(And this is accurate, even I think I've outdone myself)
What about that was forward? “Oh, I hope you don’t die.” Yes, that is something we want for most people.
Their interactions are so mundane. They’re like (I’m making this up now) “her skin brushed his. He blushed. Was he being too obvious?” Again and again.
(Seriously, why is it in YA that people turn red every time their crush appears in the corner of their peripheral vision. Why? They must look sunburnt ninety percent of the time.)
Even this little conversation felt forced.
“A squire who doesn’t like taverns or barmaids or drinking on another man’s coin,” Charlon laughed, gesturing for another beer. “Rare as a unicorn, that boy. Not that I’m exactly clear on what that boy is bringing to the table, if I’m being honest.”
“Andry Trelland is the reason we have the Spindleblade and even a chance of saving the realm,” Corayne answered coldly, her Cor eyes inscrutable.
Charlon raised a hand in placation. “All right, all right. Ca galle’ans allouve?” he muttered, raising an eyebrow at Sarn.
Dom failed to hide a smirk. He did not speak Madrentine, but by now he knew that Corayne most likely did. With the same twist of her lips, Sarn met his eye, sharing his sentiments for once.
Corayne’s face flushed, her grip closing on her drink. “I can think of nothing more ridiculous than being lovestruck in times such as these,” she said tightly. “And if you’d like to talk about me, I suggest you do it in Jydi. I can follow in almost everything else.”
Valtik cackled merrily into her cup.
Understand well that Corayne and Andry have known each other for a brief while before this, they’ve little to no chemistry and, yet, this is a wink-wink, nudge-nudge sent by the author, saying “aww, they’re so in love. Even their friends see it!” It’s like she’s trying to convince us they should be together rather than allowing things to happen organically. Cut out the romance, Aveyard, please. The book is flying without it. It’s really not needed, especially when it is the most boring ship I’ve ever witnessed and is a prime example of why we need to get away from unnecessary YA tropes.
Sorasa Sarn is probably my favourite of our crew but she stills relies on generic Assassin trope. I feel assassins have been overdone, especially assassins who are emotionless, disappear like Batman, are legendary everywhere. Also, in the first half of the book, there’s lot of times where Sorasa makes snarky little comments about men and it’s like “why? Who asked for this?”
He was always terrible at hiding his intentions. Such is the way with men.
Or (my personal favourite)
The Amhara has great need for those who pass unseen and who is more unseen to men than a woman
Or
I learned long ago not to trust the promises of men. Even immortal ones
Yes. You go Queen.
Joking aside, you might come at me like “but, empowering!” No, frankly, I just found them really annoying and lazy. They came out of nowhere and once again, it’s like the author is trying to pat herself on the book and smugly say “look how feministy my book is” because her character…disses guys?
I firmly believe if a book has to tell you it’s message verbally by its characters, it’s because it’s not doing a good job. Tell-don’t-show once again. It feels like peak Girlboss feminism, like “woohoo, look at me, attacking the patriarchy,” rather than offering anything of substance. It's getting too surface-level and is honestly I skip over it at this stage.
Honestly, I’d just rather have more fantasy books where the women aren’t second class citizens. If we can’t have gender equality in real life, can’t we have in it in some books? There’s instances in this book where if a woman is in armour, they get side-eyes or little boys sneer. Thankfully, this discourse does stop in the second half but I rolled my eyes whenever I had read through it.
Sorasa does have a lot of agency and I feel the cold-hearted man killer assassin is toned down, which is great because it sets her apart from other assassins. Another great aspect of Sorasa is she’s about thirty, I think? And it was refreshing to see a character with that much skill have a believable training timeframe to back her up instead of being like “I’ve been the Assassin Legend since me mum kicked me on the street when I was little more than a toddler.”
Though her and Dom’s relationship gets old (they insult each other all the time. He snarls, she snaps, blah-blah), I liked it her relationships with woman in the novel. She takes on a – I wouldn’t say motherly – but a protective role towards Corayne which was refreshing to see.
To return to the feminism aspect of this book, it’s actually a shame Aveyard did feel she had to mention anything about it because all the female characters are powerful and exist as their own person. The work was already put in so the quotes pointing out men ended up being more irrelevant. Aveyard, rely on your own writing and characters please! It’s all there.
Valtik is our final member of the group and is…unneeded. She’s a witch who can see the future but the thing is she speaks in…rhymes all the time. It’s certainly a choice. Also her future-telling is really ambiguous. She only tells people things when she wants to so it’s kind of like “Yo, Valtik, will we die?” and she cackles and says “Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall etc.” and you’re like. “Um, no.”
Her eccentricity is supposed to be part of the whimsical *charm* of her character but I think it’d just be really annoying in a real life situation. Like, I can’t even get behind it as a reader because she has these powers and she’s just not answering anything. She literally says “Where’s the fun in telling you everything, that’s a boring song to sing.” Valtik, stop being so self-absorbed! They’re trying to stop the end of the world.
Though this rhyme did make me laugh.
Better than a kraken, we are not forsaken
It’s just because I pronounce kraken as kra-kin not cray-kin so it was a little lost on me.
Besides the characters, I’ve the same issue with the dialogue. It’s very “snarky, snark, snark” and completely serviceable but as I read on I was thinking “what distinguishes this from any other YA book? Could I divide this from ACOTAR or Shadow and Bone?” And I realised I couldn’t. It reminded me of an AI bot spends a thousand hours studying YA books and this is exactly what it would be like. It was never funny or quotable, just completely, utterly filler. Now, I’m being unfair. I could use this criticism on many books. But maybe it’s just because I’m growing out of YA that I’m looking for a little more and I’m not getting it.
World? Probably fleshed out, only issue is I didn’t have a map. I heard there’s one in the hardback copy but that seems a real loss by the publishers since all these place names were thrown at me and I could never reference them in my head, so I’ve forgotten most of them I think. They need to do them in the paperback one day. Not for financial purposes, but just because it does make the book struggle, I think.
(This is an edit to say I had a dream where my paperback did have the map? I don’t know what’s real anymore and I’m too lazy to check)
No distinctive cultures or traditions stood out. It was like “oh, look Jydi and Gallish people” and I was like “if you say so.”
The magic wasn’t fleshed out. That doesn’t bother me, but I’m reading Legendborn at the moment and that magic system is proving a real treat. My only issue with the absence of a magic system is you’re unsure what the limits are. There's a sorcerer in this book (barely used) and it posed the question couldn't he defeat all of his enemies with magic hand waving? There must be some limit there, but it was never unexplained. This means a possible deus ex machina could be pulled out of nowhere in the future which I would be very disappointed by. Since it wasn't popped out in this book, I don't mind it all and it doesn't need to be explained to me.
The villain is unremarkable. Wants chaos and He Who Waits to come out for no justifiable reason (in my opinion). He makes dramatic speeches and threatens people for fun. I think I prefer courteous villians (think Gus from Breaking Bad) who do what they have to do without the boring "I hate everyone and I don't care who gets hurt in my mischef, mwa-ha-ha." (I do hate everyone, though, so I can relate). I mean just go to therapy, man, and resolve your low self esteem issues. It’s so much easier instead of wanting to take over the world.
The writing was magnificent. Best written book I’ve read all year. Definitely why I’m giving it four stars. It always kept my attention and was so enriching, just *whispers* yes, God.
The ending is actually kind of strange. I’d disagree there’s a twist. In fact, this book ends like the sequel is an after-thought. I can confidently say it wrapped up the majority of what happened in this book. And while it’s better than those books that tie nothing up in lieu for a sequel, it’s still like “Oh. That’s all that happened?” It could be a standalone, if a standalone didn’t actually use the elements it said it would.
Overall, it’s a good second book (series, I mean. This sounds like I was trying to ignore the rest of the Red Queen series, but it was literally just a mistype. But I also did kind of ignore the rest of the series so...I'm not wrong?) from Aveyard. It’s excellently written, expansive and there’s a lot of potential there. However, I just couldn’t bypass how generic the characters and dialogue were. It really feels like it’s combined every YA book to form them without putting in any effort or making them anything more than blank mouthpieces.
The four stars must seem conflicting but this is really just the book I’ve selected in today’s Why YA Needs More Originality. Hopefully with a little more effort, some use of the Spindles and character development (anything, please), the next book might step up to the mark.
