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Kogiopsis's Reviews > The Wolf of Oren-Yaro
The Wolf of Oren-Yaro (Chronicles of the Bitch Queen, #1)
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Kogiopsis's review
bookshelves: reviewed, pacing-pacing-pacing, not-for-the-sensitive, why-i-love-my-kindle
Oct 10, 2020
bookshelves: reviewed, pacing-pacing-pacing, not-for-the-sensitive, why-i-love-my-kindle
The word that comes to mind is 'muddy'.
This book felt very much like it would be dynamic and enjoyable, after a few more editing passes. Right now, the plot spends far too much time meandering with the protagonist helplessly carried along by the current. It has the feel of a classic episodic quest, wherein every encounter along the way becomes vital to the resolution, except that it's not executed quite well enough and the conclusion comes off more as an attempt to retroactively justify all that wandering. I wondered, a little under half way through, if I was reading a NaNo novel that just hadn't gotten pared down.
I wanted to like Queen Talyien, I really did. But damn, is it hard to like someone who displays so little competence and has so little drive! There were brief flashes where she actually did some problem-solving, and one moment when she set out on the road with a goal where I thought things might be looking up... but those moments ended and she was, each time, left once again powerless and aimless. (Several of these bouts of powerlessness included a threat of impending rape. I made myself a promise early in the book that if she ever actually was raped I'd just DNF it, which thankfully I did not have to do.)
But seriously... I really struggled to root for her, and not - as the series title suggests - because she's a bitch. She's not, really, but she's also not much else. The essential conflict of her character sounds great in abstract: the struggle of balancing duty and self-determination, and her duty to her nation vs responsibilities closer to her heart. And yet, for almost half the book she's aimless, seeming utterly unmotivated - not planning to get back to her country, not investigating the assassination attempt that left her stranded, nothing. There's no sense of progress because there's no goal.
The one really clear thing about Talyien is that she loves her husband, Rayyel, even though he abandoned her and their son. The more was revealed about him, I just could not fathom why. He's an obnoxious git when first introduced in flashbacks, and he gets worse. (view spoiler) The one thing the creepy antagonist is not wrong about is that Rayyel absolutely is not worth it.
By the end of this book, after around 500 pages, I think the plot might actually be heading somewhere with a sense of purpose... but at this point, I don't care anymore about anyone in it. There weren't even any side characters of particular note - except for the one that felt almost designed for mass appeal, complete with self-sacrificing backstory and a bit of 'crook with a heart of gold', but after he conveniently appeared one too many times I stopped caring about him as a character and started resenting him as a deus ex machina.
Not for me, the rest of this series.
This book felt very much like it would be dynamic and enjoyable, after a few more editing passes. Right now, the plot spends far too much time meandering with the protagonist helplessly carried along by the current. It has the feel of a classic episodic quest, wherein every encounter along the way becomes vital to the resolution, except that it's not executed quite well enough and the conclusion comes off more as an attempt to retroactively justify all that wandering. I wondered, a little under half way through, if I was reading a NaNo novel that just hadn't gotten pared down.
I wanted to like Queen Talyien, I really did. But damn, is it hard to like someone who displays so little competence and has so little drive! There were brief flashes where she actually did some problem-solving, and one moment when she set out on the road with a goal where I thought things might be looking up... but those moments ended and she was, each time, left once again powerless and aimless. (Several of these bouts of powerlessness included a threat of impending rape. I made myself a promise early in the book that if she ever actually was raped I'd just DNF it, which thankfully I did not have to do.)
But seriously... I really struggled to root for her, and not - as the series title suggests - because she's a bitch. She's not, really, but she's also not much else. The essential conflict of her character sounds great in abstract: the struggle of balancing duty and self-determination, and her duty to her nation vs responsibilities closer to her heart. And yet, for almost half the book she's aimless, seeming utterly unmotivated - not planning to get back to her country, not investigating the assassination attempt that left her stranded, nothing. There's no sense of progress because there's no goal.
The one really clear thing about Talyien is that she loves her husband, Rayyel, even though he abandoned her and their son. The more was revealed about him, I just could not fathom why. He's an obnoxious git when first introduced in flashbacks, and he gets worse. (view spoiler) The one thing the creepy antagonist is not wrong about is that Rayyel absolutely is not worth it.
By the end of this book, after around 500 pages, I think the plot might actually be heading somewhere with a sense of purpose... but at this point, I don't care anymore about anyone in it. There weren't even any side characters of particular note - except for the one that felt almost designed for mass appeal, complete with self-sacrificing backstory and a bit of 'crook with a heart of gold', but after he conveniently appeared one too many times I stopped caring about him as a character and started resenting him as a deus ex machina.
Not for me, the rest of this series.
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Reading Progress
March 9, 2020
– Shelved
March 9, 2020
– Shelved as:
to-read
Started Reading
October 10, 2020
– Shelved as:
reviewed
October 10, 2020
– Shelved as:
pacing-pacing-pacing
October 10, 2020
– Shelved as:
not-for-the-sensitive
October 10, 2020
– Shelved as:
why-i-love-my-kindle
October 10, 2020
–
Finished Reading
Comments Showing 1-2 of 2 (2 new)
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Angelina
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rated it 2 stars
Dec 23, 2020 07:10PM
No but literally I’m furious over the double standard that tali apparently doesn’t even see herself? Is this a political fantasy or a shitty romance about a woman falling over herself for her piece of shit husband who has literally no redeeming qualities?? And you’re right about all the threatened rape. I expect more from female authors. Are we not past this form of story telling?
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Angelina wrote: "No but literally I’m furious over the double standard that tali apparently doesn’t even see herself? Is this a political fantasy or a shitty romance about a woman falling over herself for her piece..."I suspect it's typical first-novel stuff - early writing that doesn't stray too far from the tropes one absorbs as a reader, plus having writing goals but not really knowing how to get there... which is fine, but makes it wholly undeserving of its hype.
