A Book of Spirits and Thieves

Book Title: A Book of Spirits and Thieves

Author: Morgan Rhodes
Series: Spirits and Thieves #1

Date Started: July 26th 2017

Date Completed: July 30th 2017

Genres: Fantasy, Contemporary
Quality Rating: Two Stars
Enjoyment Rating: Two Star

Final Rating: Two stars

Review:

A Book of Spirits and Thieves has the Veronica Roth/Allegiant syndrome: it's bad and it changes how you see the rest of the expanding universe. The Falling Kingdoms series is one of my favourites, so I'd recommend if you like the original books steer away from these ones.

I'm definitely going to stick to Rhodes' fantasy in the future. While the plot was riddled head to foot with holes, the blend of fantastical and contemporary settings and its writing style was what made me want this book to end. No one speaks the way these characters do, let alone acts like them. Everything ends up so unbelievable because it's carelessly written. I don't know whether its production was rushed, or it just wasn't working, but the people don't hold solid enough to build anything on top of.

Nothing of significance happens in this book, it's all set up. The issues presented at the start are conveniently solved by the end, leaving lots of mysterious obviously-leading questions that are going to lead to some good vs. evil conspiracy that I'm not motivated to learn any more about. It wasn't very far through this book that I wanted it to be over, but I continued in the hopes that it would redeem itself later on. It was clear early on that it was a prequel to books where things actually happen, so I thought once something kicked off it'd be okay. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case in what I read; everything ends up being for the shock factor more than any sort of sensical plot.

When the womanising posh twat who supports cult public executions it the most likeable character, you know that something has gone wrong. (And no, I'm not interested that there's apparently a supernatural explanation and he used to be very different.) I didn't care about any of the protagonists (all bar Farrell - the aforementioned manipulative idiot - were blatantly irritating) or any of their relationships to one another. It was either instalove, hollow or forced. You can't build a story on the flat shapes of people and hope they'll inflate themselves.

I'm not going to be reading the other books in this spin-off series. I regret spending so long on this one honestly. It's a shame since the Falling Kingdoms is one of my favourites, but this did not get anywhere near the appeal of that series.