Crystal Storm

Book Title: Crystal Storm

Author: Morgan Rhodes
Series: Falling Kingdoms #5

Date Started: December 26th 2016

Date Completed: December 15th 2016

Genres: Fantasy, Romance, Adventure
Quality Rating: Three Stars
Enjoyment Rating: Four Star

Final Rating: Three stars

Review:

As the fifth instalment of the Falling Kingdoms series, things are started to pull together. The characters are gravitating towards each other and everyone's endgames are starting to be revealed. But while Crystal Storm jumped the story forward, for me it stumbled back in terms of character development and relationships.

This book was quite predictable, but then again I've never read the Falling Kingdoms series for its plotline, I've always been much more interested in its characters. But it'd be nice to have a few little twists here and there like the previous books. In fact a lot of what didn't work for me in Crystal Storm is to do with the standards the series has set itself so far, so I can't be too harsh; Gathering Shadows and Frozen Tides especially were always going to be a tough act to follow. But where the rest of the series has felt well done with a few little errors slipping through, Crystal Storm felt like there was a huge rush to get the book done so a lot of things were left to slide in. There's an awful lot of telling instead of showing in this book, and when there's so many characters we know so well to interact with one another this really shouldn't be the case, especially when Rhodes has be able to imply things without directly telling us before.

Another little thing I want to mention was the way that abuse was dealt with. On the surface, there's a great, strong picture given about how wrong it is. But saying 'I'd never let anyone raise a hand to me, I'm too strong' and leaving it at that doesn't give a good representation of how other people's actions supposedly dictate your strength or weakness. How other people act say things about them, not you. I'm very sure this wasn't the message that was intended, but it troubles me that it only half dealt with the issue. I find this a bit in the feminist side of the story as well: everyone's very quick to say that the women are as strong as men, but are also very quick to insult men for being men, and are then happy submit to masculinity. As a whole, these aren't huge, glaring problems because it the vast scheme of things it works in the story and supports the characters and their values, but it's still a little detail that I think gets out of hand in a lot of fiction quickly if its not addressed.

What frustrated me the most about this book was that there's so many stupid pieces of dialogue, or silly predictable plot twists, or even tiny little actions that are so cliched and out of place just for the sake of having a 'funny' response or a forced interaction between characters. Don't get me wrong, these little things definitely happened in the previous books but they weren't every other page. In Crystal Storm it felt like Rhodes was doing whatever felt the most dramatic regardless of the continuity she'd painstakingly built up over the series. She sacrifices her own story for sounds cool and I just think it's a shame. In this book especially, the instances of this became much bigger plot holes and empty logic just to get into tense situations or play with our heart strings. But unfortunately it brought me so out of the story I wasn't getting that emotional response anymore.

While everyone's paths have crossed, and we're building up to the ending from here on out, Crystal Storm honestly felt... stagnant. Though the story did progress, we didn't actually move that far over the whole book - you can count the locations on one hand - and events didn't have the weight to it like in the previous books. In all fairness, some things had to be cleared up before we get into the final chapters of the series, but perhaps it was a bad, bad idea to bring everyone together so soon then. When I saw everyone ending up in the same place, I immediately thought that this is it, things are really going to speed up now. Instead, I'm still waiting for that final catalyst to go off as everything goes to hell.

I've mentioned that I felt Crystal Storm took a stumble backwards in terms of characters for this book; the most obvious example of this being that I don't think the characters were really themselves. I sympathise with Rhodes at having to write so many characters that we've grown to know so well in the same place at the same time (again, was that sensible?), but in favour or creating some honestly unnecessary dramatic tension we have characters acting like people they're not. And the consequence of this was that they're losing their lovability; I'm finding it harder and harder to look at them as real people. In fact, in the few days it's taken me to get to writing this review I completely forgot that we lost some people in this book. That's not a good sign.

This series follows multiple narratives, but it's a lie to say that it's not the Cleo and Magnus show. Unusually, this is something that's developed as the readers have made clear their preferences and it's really nice to see that Rhodes is giving us more of them as a result. I, personally, love both Cleo and Magnus - on their own and together. However, some of their relationship dramas in this book were just for the hell of it, let's be honest. (Slight spoilers: there's no reason to 'curse' Cleo past the sexual tension; there's no logic behind them keeping their relationship a secret; there's no point in suggesting a love triangle with Jonas other than to have the angsty arguments). I have no problems with romance being included - hell, Cleo and Magnus is a couple that I definitely indulge in - but because I like them as characters so much I want it to feel genuine, not cliche tension to tease your readers.

Crystal Storm was a genuinely enjoyable read but it's not the standard I expect from Rhodes these days. A long series where hype grows is a hard thing to keep up and I commend her for where the books are going, but this particular instalment was a bit of a let down when so much of it was powered with cliches that we know Rhodes has the ability to avoid.

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