Victoria Aveyard
Series: Red Queen, #2
Genre: Dystopian, Fantasy, Young Adult
Publisher: HarperTeen
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Goodreads
After reading and loving Red Queen, I was anxiously waiting for Glass Sword. Being that I've kind of been on a book buying ban, I decided to wait for it at the elibrary, which ended up meaning waiting until September to finally make my way to the top of the wait list. While Glass Sword was a decent next installment in the series and certainly a good second book, it really did not live up to my expectations.
For people who've yet to start this series, it definitely has a Hunger Games feel to it. There are the obvious parallels - dystopian society with a girl who defies the odds and fights for the people - but more than that, the narration itself is similar style. Both series are written in a first person, present-tense style, which is not something I recall coming across in any other books I've read. If you liked the narration style of The Hunger Games, I'd definitely recommend checking out the Red Queen series.
Glass Sword starts out very slowly. Honestly, for the first 40% of the book, I felt like nothing was happening. Of course, things were happening, but there was so much complaining about the same things over and over again in the narration that it would put me to sleep. No, really - I usually read for a little while on my Kindle before I fall asleep, but I would fall asleep after less than a page of Glass Sword in that first 40%. It took me over 3 months to make it through that much of the book. (For those of you concerned that I borrowed a library book for 3 months, I kind of cheated the system and turned the wifi off on my Kindle so I could keep reading without extending my loan.) I almost DNFed the book because I found that I was not excited to read it.
While the first half of the book was not great for me, I'm glad I kept reading because the book definitely improved drastically from there. While the first half of the book sets up the story, the second half is the follow through - the story starts to go in a completely different and more exciting direction (in my opinion). There was still a lot of the same complaining in the narration that I found a bit annoying, but it was more bearable since it was interspersed with action sequences.
Overall impression, I definitely can't say I loved this book, but I wouldn't avoid the series because of it - this installment was still satisfying enough that it makes the series (thus far) worth it. I was saddened by some of the loses in the book, but there are a bunch of great new characters and tons of possibilities for King's Cage. I'm interested to see where it goes, especially after what happened at the end!
Do you have any favorite second books in a series?
Let us know in the comments!
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