Mizuki's Reviews > Ruin and Rising

review for book 2 of the trilogy

Note: I read the Chinese translation of this book.

Rating: 'mediocre' is the word to describe this final book 2 stars.

More importantly, I decided to blacklist Leigh Bardugo, if she doesn't bother to do sound research for her books and she has nothing outstanding to offer in the departments of plots and character development, then I can't see why should I bother with her creations.

Ruin and Rising isn't terrible, but it isn't remarkable neither, this book is among the thousand YA books with little creativity, mediocre fantasy setting, mediocre characters, mediocre plots and mediocre writing. Entirely forgettable and 'Meh'.

The saddest thing about this book is, it actually has a tiny bit of potential to be outstanding and awesome, but it doesn't live up to any of its promise.

actual review starts here:

The beginning part of this book can easily win 4 stars, because for the first time, our MCs and their friends seem to know what they're doing and they are doing things with a plan. Our heroine, Alina shows a bit of a backbone and manages to keep the shadowy Apparat at check; the supporting characters are doing great, even Mal, Love Interest No.1, proves himself to be a capable fighter and a loyal, supportive friend instead a jealous little boy who stomps his feet when his favorite toy gets stolen by this other boy. (Yes, that's how I see his reaction toward Alina after she gets the attention of Love Interest No.3, Nikolai)

You might ask, what can go wrong with this book? Well, a handful of things have managed to go wrong after this promising beginning:

(1) Alina:

We have already established that Alina isn't all that smart, she doesn't have much of a backbone to be spoken of neither, to make things worse she has a strange determination to be as unimportant and invisible as she can get and of course she is uncomfortable with her power because you know, a *normal* girl can't enjoy or at least be comfortable with having power, a *normal* girl can't dream of having anything outside of a boyfriend/husband and a bunch of kids.

Dear Lord, I'm so sick of YA girls who are afraid of being powerful/using their power. It's like the authors are telling us: normal girls cannot have power, if you happened to have power and/or enjoyed being powerful, then you are a freak, or a bad woman, or a crazy woman, or all of the above.

Plus. Alina also has the gut to whine about how difficult her life has become when the Kingdom is in some deep shit and everyone else is also suffering and/or having their own problems.

Girl, get over yourself.

To be fair, Alina isn't as awful as she had been in book 1 and book 2 (finally the girl is making some decisions for herself!) But all in all, she isn't a terribly interesting character, I'm more interested in what David, Genya and Zoya are up to than I'm with Alina.

(2) Everyone is none the wiser

The characters fail to (view spoiler)[figure out one of their 'friends' is a traitor (hide spoiler)] when it's just so obvious, no wonder The Darkling, a.k.a Love Interest No. 2, manages to outsmart them for so many times.

Talking about The Darkling, a.k.a Love Interest No. 2, in my opinion he isn't all that great even since book 1, but in this book he is as anticlimactic as an arch villain as he can get.

(3) Author wrapped everything up with a pretty ribbon and then called it a day

In the end everything has been wrapped up *too nicely*, so it loses whatever bittersweet effect it might have on the readers. I mean, (view spoiler)[Mal is dead for a second, but then barely 2 pages latter he's alive and well again. *groans*

In my opinion, it would have been better if Mal winded up dead and left Alina to deal with the aftermath alone. (hide spoiler)]

(4) The 'final plot twist' is not convincing.

I mean, really? Really? (view spoiler)[The author doesn't even have the gut to kill Mal off and instead she let him 'die' for two pages and then be revived shortly afterward? (hide spoiler)]