Book Review – ‘Glass Sword’ by Victoria Aveyard

From the slums, to the castle and ending up in the trenches, Mare is in for the fight of her life.

Genre: Science Fiction, Fantasy

No. of pages: 444

From Goodreads:

If there’s one thing Mare Barrow knows, it’s that she’s different.

Mare Barrow’s blood is red—the color of common folk—but her Silver ability, the power to control lightning, has turned her into a weapon that the royal court tries to control.

The crown calls her an impossibility, a fake, but as she makes her escape from Maven, the prince—the friend—who betrayed her, Mare uncovers something startling: she is not the only one of her kind.

Pursued by Maven, now a vindictive king, Mare sets out to find and recruit other Red-and-Silver fighters to join in the struggle against her oppressors.

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?

It wasn’t long after the release date that I began reading this follow up to Victoria Aveyards debut, and it had some big shoes to fill with all the hype surrounding this release; but did it meet my expectations? ‘Glass Sword’ has definitely surpassed ‘Red Queen’ in my opinion. More complexity. More characters. More supernatural. More action and character development. It impressed me on so many levels.

Picking up the story not long after where ‘Red Queen’ concluded our protagonist, Mare and her (kind of) beau, Cal’s relationship for most of the novel was…. I want to say distracting… because of the nuances of their history and situation. And though it made good reading I’m not sure if I was completely sold on the pairing until after half way. Mare is not the type of girl who needs a man. And Cal certainly does not see her as a damsel in distress. They are warriors with equal gifts to use in their arsenal. A great team for the rebellion. There is distaste and attraction equally present for Mare, she is battling with what she thinks of Cal. War is a difficult time to form romance, it shows our nature at its ugliest and most basic.

 

Cameron was a great addition to the cast – a realistic portrayal of a tween and not quite an antagonist. I really appreciated the dynamic he brought to the relationships and it was relieving to read a story which strains many of the typical tropes of characters in YA.

Maven has transformed into someone else entirely and immerses himself fully into the role of the antagonist. This is where I was a little disappointed: I wanted to see some humanity or inner struggle with Maven. All the other characters were written so beautifully, where Maven tended towards a stereotype.

Though the narrative style – easy to read – had occasional moments where a sentence felt clunky, and had me rereading the line several times to understand what was being conveyed. ‘Glass Sword’ is definitely high on my recommendations list and is helping me get into a fantasy mood after a past year heavy the contemporary titles.

Plenty of surprises. Great character development.

The ending was bloody brilliant!

Bring on Red Queen #3 – no title yet and just an expected publication date as somewhere in 2017 – Argh! I’ll just have to fill up my time with some other great series 🙂

Overall feeling: Damn girl!

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