Sophie Reads YA: Victoria Aveyard

Waiting on Wednesday: War Storm (Red Queen #4) by Victoria Aveyard

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2017 Flights of Fantasy Challenge

ARC Review: King's Cage (Red Queen #3) by Victoria Aveyard

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King's Cage
Series: Red Queen #3
Author: Victoria Aveyard
Published February 9th 2017 by Orion Publishing

Goodreads Synopsis
In this breathless third installment to Victoria Aveyard's bestselling Red Queen series, allegiances are tested on every side. And when the Lightning Girl's spark is gone, who will light the way for the rebellion?

Mare Barrow is a prisoner, powerless without her lightning, tormented by her lethal mistakes. She lives at the mercy of a boy she once loved, a boy made of lies and betrayal. Now a king, Maven Calore continues weaving his dead mother's web in an attempt to maintain control over his country—and his prisoner.

As Mare bears the weight of Silent Stone in the palace, her once-ragtag band of newbloods and Reds continue organizing, training, and expanding. They prepare for war, no longer able to linger in the shadows. And Cal, the exiled prince with his own claim on Mare's heart, will stop at nothing to bring her back.

When blood turns on blood, and ability on ability, there may be no one left to put out the fire—leaving Norta as Mare knows it to burn all the way down.
Goodreads

Review
I received an Advance Reader Copy from the publisher. This in no way impacted on my view.

This series, though not my favourite to begin with, has quickly become one that I enjoy reading. With each instalment, the action grows and a grows, and I don't know how we'll cope with the finale, if it keeps going this way. Mare has suffered and struggled, and now she's more at risk that ever. Following the explosive ending to Glass Sword, Mare is a prisoner of king Maven's, and he is doing whatever he can to use her to discredit the Red cause, and also to keep a shattering hold on his own power and control. Mare's ragtag group of Newbloods, along with Cal and the rest of the Red's are not letting her loss get them down. Obviously, they're planning on how to get her back, but they're also looking at the end goal, and that's the most important thing.

This book was simply fantastic. All of the main characters had excellent plot lines, and Mare's character development was unbelievable. She is treated worse than something you'd step in, and has her powers, her autonomy, her control, ripped from her, and still she's there, plotting her escape, and contingency after contingency, and doing anything she can to undermine Maven, and not let him get inside her head. Obviously, she's not strong all the time - she is human after all - but that lets us see the vulnerability, and make her more likeable, especially with how realistic the PTSD is shown to be.

Maven is an awful, nonredeemable character, and he deserves everything he gets. Unlike other 'evil' characters in other series, there's nothing about him that really gives you an element of pity. Everything his mother did to make and mould him in what he now is, has destroyed any 'human' part of his soul. His obsession of Mare - it's an obsession, there's no love there at all - causes even more hatred, because he feels like he's caring and protecting Mare in a way, when really, he's doing the exact opposite. Aveyard makes it clear that we're not getting any kind of Stockholm Syndrome here - he's evil, and that's that.

Like I said, the action is fantastic! There's so much realism in it, that the battle scenes somewhat turn into a little movie in your head, and there's no glossing over the sheer carnage and destruction which is caused by the war. There's death, there's blood, there's suffering, and it's done in a way not to reduce the importance of it, but to show that it's not something to be glorified, and the impact it can have on everyone involved.

I am dying to get my hands on book 4, and would recommend this series to anyone! I'm actually getting my mam to read them soon, after I met the author and she got interested in them :)

Dates Read:

February 11-16, 2017

Rating
4 Stars

4 Stars

ARC Review: Glass Sword (Red Queen #2) by Victoria Aveyard

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Glass Sword
Series: Red Queen #2
Author: Victoria Aveyard
Published July 21st 2016 by Orion Publishing

Goodreads Synopsis
If there's one thing Mare Barrow knows, it's that she's different. Mare's blood is red - the colour of common folk - but her Silver ability, the power to control lightning, has turned her into a weapon that the royal court wants to control.
Pursued by the vengeful Silver king, Mare sets out to find and recruit other Red-and-Silver fighters to join the rebellion. But Mare finds herself on a deadly path, at risk of becoming exactly the kind of monster she is trying to defeat.

Will she shatter under the weight of the lives that are the cost of rebellion? Or have treachery and betrayal hardened her forever?
Goodreads

Review
See my review of book 1, Red Queen.

I received an Advance Reader Copy from the publisher via NetGalley. This in no way impacted on my view.

For some reason, I have waited ages to read this book. I was approved for an ARC before the book was released, but with uni and graduating, I never got around to reading the book. When I noticed my library had a physical copy of the book, I decided it was time to start reading it, and you know, I really enjoyed it.

After the devastating betrayal we saw in Red Queen, Mare can’t believe what is happening. She knows she is a ‘new blood’ – a Red with Silver abilities, and her fiancée, Maven, whom she trusted, is planning on hunting down, and killed every person with the same abilities as her. He has the list with every new blood’s name on, and it’s down to Mare, and the Scarlet Guard, to find and protect each and every new blood. To top it all off, she doesn’t know how to deal with her feelings for Cal, who is one of her only allies, now that Maven and his mother, Elara, caused Cal to kill the king, and turned him into public enemy number one.

I enjoyed Red Queen, but was not blown away by it, and I think that may have been one of my reasons not to rush to read this book. However, I felt like whilst Red Queen seemed to regurgitate many of the common tropes in YA fantasy, this book had a definite plot, that drew me in quickly. Now that we know what the world is like, and how the fantasy aspects play out, there isn’t as much info-dumping, and the plot can play a bigger role. Mare and the Scarlet Guard, including her siblings – one of whom, Shade, is a new blood like herself – are racing across the country to find, speak to, and somewhat rescue all of the new bloods. Still, at the same time, Maven is doing the same, and Mare sometimes finds herself being too late in some places. Considering new bloods hadn’t existed – or hadn’t been known about – the numbers she finds, and adds to the Scarlet Guard is unreal.

Mare grew on me as a character throughout this book. At first, I found her annoying, and very self-involved, but now, she’s not. There’s an aspect of PTSD in the book, for both her and Cal, and I liked how Aveyard didn’t gloss over the subject, but truly showed us how broken Mare felt at times. The more and more she was unable to save someone, the more she fell into a state of despair, thinking it was all her fault, and she should’ve done something to save them.

There wasn’t much of a romantic aspect in the book, but I did enjoy what was there. For Mare, she’s conflicted on how her feelings for Maven had blinded her to his deception, and how she still cares for him, to some extent. There’s also the feelings for Cal, who she feels is one of the only people she can trust. I like them together, and can’t wait to see how the events of the book impact on them in the future. The secondary romance, which is more in the background, also intrigued me, and I wish we saw more of it.

All in all, I did like this book, and will definitely be reading book three, King’s Cage. Glass Sword didn’t have the common sophomore slump, and with the ending, I am glad I don’t have longer to wait until I can see how Mare’s story ends.

Dates Read:
November 2-4, 2016

Rating
4 Stars

Glass Sword

Waiting on Wednesday: Glass Sword (Red Queen #2) by Victoria Aveyard

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4 Stars

Review: Red Queen (Red Queen #1) by Victoria Aveyard

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Red Queen
Series: Red Queen #1
Author: Victoria Aveyard
Published July 2nd 2015 by Orion

Goodreads Synopsis
This is a world divided by blood - red or silver.

The Reds are commoners, ruled by a Silver elite in possession of god-like superpowers. And to Mare Barrow, a seventeen-year-old Red girl from the poverty-stricken Stilts, it seems like nothing will ever change.

That is, until she finds herself working in the Silver Palace. Here, surrounded by the people she hates the most, Mare discovers that, despite her red blood, she possesses a deadly power of her own. One that threatens to destroy the balance of power.

Fearful of Mare's potential, the Silvers hide her in plain view, declaring her a long-lost Silver princess, now engaged to a Silver prince. Despite knowing that one misstep would mean her death, Mare works silently to help the Red Guard, a militant resistance group, and bring down the Silver regime.

But this is a world of betrayal and lies, and Mare has entered a dangerous dance - Reds against Silvers, prince against prince, and Mare against her own heart . . .
Goodreads

Review
I'm quite conflicted with my thoughts on this book. All throughout my reading process I just kept thinking "this isn't what I expected". Now, that was either a good nor bad difference, it was just different. I think this is a case of hype clouding a person's judgement.

Red Queen tells the story of a world, whose map doesn't seem dissimilar to that of America, in which the population is split by their blood: into Reds and Silvers. Those with Red blood are basically the slaves of the Silver's, who rule over them using their special abilities. Think of a reversed X-Men here - those with abilities are king, whilst those without are nothing, lower than low. The Reds are basically being used as cannon fodder for the Silvers war: when they turn 18, if they're not it a job/apprenticeship, they are shipped off to the front, with little to no chance of survival.

We meet Mare, the MC, worrying about her 18th birthday, as she has no job, no nothing - all she is good at is stealing and pick pocketing. When her best friend, Kilorn, loses his apprenticeship and is about to be sent off to the army, she orchestrates a plan to steal enough money in order to hide the two of them. However, everything goes wrong when the hidden Red militant group, the Scarlet Guard, become public. She barely manages to escape, and meets a handsome stranger, who later gets her a job at the palace. However, this stranger is none other than the crown prince, Cal. Whilst working her first day at the palace, Mare, and the Silvers, discover that she has abilities too, abilities no Red should ever have. She is taken by the royal family, made out to be the long lost daughter of some late general, and engaged to the second prince, Maven. Now the stakes are even higher.

My main difficulty throughout this book was my thoughts on the characters, especially the two princes. With Cal, I'd guessed he be the love interest. I sort of liked him at first, but then when his bloodthirsty nature was revealed, I went off him, until I liked him again. It was all really confusing. The same can be said for Maven. He was my favourite from the get go, and seemed to really connect with Mare. Basically he was everything she needed. And then, his true nature was revealed, and I absolutely hated the SoB. I honestly think the only character who I liked throughout the whole book was Mare, she seriously was the best thing in Red Queen.

Another thing that brought the rating down was that there seemed to be a love square, if such a thing exists. Having three love interests for the main character is totally unrealistic, and honestly brought the down of the book down to bordering on childish. If this isn't properly resolved in Glass Sword I think I'll rip my hair out.

However, the world building was brilliant, and that is one aspect I can't wait to read more about. Like I said, I think the map looks similar to the geography of the USA, though the different countries and principalities make it all together unique. Having some areas of the landscape inaccessible due to radiation was something new, and I hope this topic of radiation is developed. Perhaps that has something to do with why Mare, a Red, has Silver abilities?

All in all, Red Queen was really enjoyable, and I'm so glad I've finally had the chance to read it. Though it wasn't what I was expecting, though I'm not sure what that is, I am desperate for Glass Sword, as the ending left so many questions that need answering. The revelations came from out of nowhere, and I can't wait to see how these are explored further.

Dates Read:
July 16-18, 2015

Rating
4 Stars