Erin: Storm Siren by Mary Weber
Hello Everyone! Another review for you! Storm Siren is a YA Fantasy Novel that I had been keeping my eye on for a little bit. I had heard good things about it and finally decided to read it while I was on vacation.
From Goodreads:
"I raise my chin as the buyers stare. Yes. Look. You don't want me. Because, eventually, accidentally, I will destroy you."
In a world at war, a slave girl's lethal curse could become one kingdom's weapon of salvation. If the curse-- and the girl-- can be controlled.
As a slave in the war-weary kingdom of Faelen, seventeen year-old Nym isn't merely devoid of rights, her Elemental kind are only born male and always killed at birth - meaning, she shouldn't even exist.
Standing on the auction block beneath smoke-drenched mountains, Nym faces her fifteenth sell. But when her hood is removed and her storm-summoning killing curse revealed, Nym snatched up by a court advisor and given a choice: be trained as the weapon Faelen needs to win the war, or be killed.
Choosing the former, Nym is unleashed into a world of politics, bizarre parties, and rumors of an evil more sinister than she's being prepared to fight...not to mention the handsome trainer whose dark secrets lie behind a mysterious ability to calm every lightning strike she summons.
But what if she doesn't want to be the weapon they've all been waiting for?
Set in a beautifully eclectic world of suspicion, super abilities, and monsters, Storm Siren is a story of power. And whoever controls that power will win.
Erin's Thoughts:
I had a lot, a lot of issues with this book. In fact, I'm not exactly sure where to start...The characters were all caricatures. They were flat, they seemed very contrived, and they weren't convincing to me as real people with depth. All of them were so ridiculous. I did not connect to any of the character and had a hard time getting through a lot of the book because I was annoyed with pretty much all of them.
Nym is one of those characters who are special for special's sake. The only thing that made her unique from other people was her special ability. Other than that there was nothing to distinguish her from other characters. But one of the biggest problems I had with Nym was that she only liked Eogan because he was attractive. She refers to him as "unreasonably attractive" through out the book and except for the fact that he is good-looking, I don't think there was a reason why she liked him. That right there is one of my biggest pet peeves. I really dislike the idea that someone falls in love with someone else because of how they look. Sure, there are people like that in the world, but it seems very superficial to me and very fake to me. It also felt like instal-love to me: Nym falls in love with Eogan after seeing him one time, because, you guess it! He's pretty!
Another problem I had was that there wasn't a true villain. Was it her slave-master Adora? Was it the Draewulf (I'm sorry, I still don't even know what that is)? Was it the king of the land they were at war with? Who were they supposed to be fighting? Because there wasn't one specific enemy, the entire plot felt very unfocused.
Minor things that annoyed me a lot:
-All the weird curse words ("What in the hulls?, "Son of a bolcrane", "Mother of Kracken"). It just became way too much after a while and really started to bug me.
-Colin: He's a seventeen year old boy who is bald. Why is he bald? There was no explanation why. Also he's just ridiculous and not in a good way. He literally kisses his biceps and struts around the ladies with no shirt on, YET is shown to be incredibly deep and meaningful. Ugh.
-Breck: I could not get a sense of her character. She has this incredibly thick accent that, while it didn't bother me at first, once everything else started bugging me, this also did as well. She was just an odd character that I felt had no purpose except to serve this one twist in the book.
Overall Rating:
From Goodreads:
"I raise my chin as the buyers stare. Yes. Look. You don't want me. Because, eventually, accidentally, I will destroy you."
In a world at war, a slave girl's lethal curse could become one kingdom's weapon of salvation. If the curse-- and the girl-- can be controlled.
As a slave in the war-weary kingdom of Faelen, seventeen year-old Nym isn't merely devoid of rights, her Elemental kind are only born male and always killed at birth - meaning, she shouldn't even exist.
Standing on the auction block beneath smoke-drenched mountains, Nym faces her fifteenth sell. But when her hood is removed and her storm-summoning killing curse revealed, Nym snatched up by a court advisor and given a choice: be trained as the weapon Faelen needs to win the war, or be killed.
Choosing the former, Nym is unleashed into a world of politics, bizarre parties, and rumors of an evil more sinister than she's being prepared to fight...not to mention the handsome trainer whose dark secrets lie behind a mysterious ability to calm every lightning strike she summons.
But what if she doesn't want to be the weapon they've all been waiting for?
Set in a beautifully eclectic world of suspicion, super abilities, and monsters, Storm Siren is a story of power. And whoever controls that power will win.
Erin's Thoughts:
I had a lot, a lot of issues with this book. In fact, I'm not exactly sure where to start...The characters were all caricatures. They were flat, they seemed very contrived, and they weren't convincing to me as real people with depth. All of them were so ridiculous. I did not connect to any of the character and had a hard time getting through a lot of the book because I was annoyed with pretty much all of them.
Nym is one of those characters who are special for special's sake. The only thing that made her unique from other people was her special ability. Other than that there was nothing to distinguish her from other characters. But one of the biggest problems I had with Nym was that she only liked Eogan because he was attractive. She refers to him as "unreasonably attractive" through out the book and except for the fact that he is good-looking, I don't think there was a reason why she liked him. That right there is one of my biggest pet peeves. I really dislike the idea that someone falls in love with someone else because of how they look. Sure, there are people like that in the world, but it seems very superficial to me and very fake to me. It also felt like instal-love to me: Nym falls in love with Eogan after seeing him one time, because, you guess it! He's pretty!
Another problem I had was that there wasn't a true villain. Was it her slave-master Adora? Was it the Draewulf (I'm sorry, I still don't even know what that is)? Was it the king of the land they were at war with? Who were they supposed to be fighting? Because there wasn't one specific enemy, the entire plot felt very unfocused.
Minor things that annoyed me a lot:
-All the weird curse words ("What in the hulls?, "Son of a bolcrane", "Mother of Kracken"). It just became way too much after a while and really started to bug me.
-Colin: He's a seventeen year old boy who is bald. Why is he bald? There was no explanation why. Also he's just ridiculous and not in a good way. He literally kisses his biceps and struts around the ladies with no shirt on, YET is shown to be incredibly deep and meaningful. Ugh.
-Breck: I could not get a sense of her character. She has this incredibly thick accent that, while it didn't bother me at first, once everything else started bugging me, this also did as well. She was just an odd character that I felt had no purpose except to serve this one twist in the book.
Overall Rating:
I would give it zero, but unfortunately we only go to 1 bookie.
Like I said, I was very annoyed with many things and after a while, I just found myself skimming. I did make it to the end of the book, but I was increasingly getting annoyed and frustrated with this book. I did not find a single thing that I liked about this book and it's kind of one of those books that I could rant about for days (I won't though :)). The one word that I would use to describe this book is "lackluster". I think that about sums it all up. No surprisingly, I will not be reading the next two books in this series.
Erin @The Romance Bookie :)
What I want to know is, how can you have a race where everyone is born male? Who gives birth to them? Killed at birth? Where does the next generation come from? Even if they're born to humans, surely the storm siren gene would eventually disappear?
ReplyDeleteSome fantasy writers think they don't have to consider science because, fantasy!