Immortal Reign

Book Title: Immortal Reign

Author: Morgan Rhodes

Series: Falling Kingdoms #6

Date Started: February 11th 2018

Date Completed: February 12th 2018

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

Final Rating: Three stars

Review:

I've never said that the Falling Kingdoms series was high literature, but it has always been enjoyable. This sticks through to Immortal Reign, if waning a little towards the end. I think the more inventive storyline at the beginning of this series was far more effective than the canon good vs. evil battle it becomes, but it's nice having been able to follow these characters along further.

I did forget how hand-holdey the writing is. I find myself sitting there thinking 'yes, I know' whenever I'm reminded about a plot point that was revealed five minutes ago. As a reader, I don't need to be directly told everything. If Cleo's angry you only have to say it once (and at this point I'm probably going to expect it) - don't go through a thesaurus looking for different versions of the same adjective. I think it's more a self-conscious thing than bad technique, but I would hope that six books into a series there's enough character development to hold the people up by themselves without having to tell the reader exactly what they're thinking.

The plotline goes pretty much as you'd expect from a Falling Kingdoms books: things change three times a page, people argue five times a page, and time itself jumps massively in a single sentence. People often refer to this series as the Young Adult Game of Thrones, and I think that's kind of fair (I don't think YA necessarily has to be as simplistic as that leads you to believe, but the structure and storytelling style is similar). But, don't get me wrong, it is still enjoyable. As much as I don't like being told everything rather than being shown it, it's nice to just fall into a book and let it take you without having to engage much. The dramatics are indulgently so, over-the-top and a bit silly but it's fun. (The romance is a bit lovey-dovey at this point but hey, guilty pleasures.) I just wish the structure of logic was held a little stronger, so I could buy into the story, however over-dramatic it was.

The biggest example of which being the characters' motivations. Ever since learning about scriptwriting and directing I've been a little hyperaware of this, but what a character wants is what determines how they act. Most of us don't even acknowledge that motivation, it's just what's underlying to make the character developed and solid. But in Immortal Reign, characters change their tune lightning fast just to go with what the story needs, and I think it's a disrespect to their characters. I mean what even was Lucia in this book? In theory, she's conflicted between protecting those she cares about and doing the right thing, but what happens is that she's confiding in the heroes one moment and allied with the antagonists with all of her loyalty the next - and I'm supposed to feel like she's still conflicted. It wasn't ambivalent, it was just unbelievable. 

This is all really to do with the fact that Cleo should really be the protagonist. I don't know why we have so many characters when the author clearly only cares about her - and don't get me wrong, I only care about Cleo. But there's this whole cast of characters that aren't distinguishable enough to do anything more than show up in a few scenes and say a few words before hanging around behind the main trio. I feel like this wasn't so prevalent in the other books, but now that all the heroes are in the same location at the same time with the same obstacles, everyone but Cleo, Magnus, and maybe Jonas, just get pushed to the side. I think the book might have benefitted from being Cleo's story, with a whole host of other side characters, than trying to make everyone equal in an ensemble cast.

I did still enjoy the last book in the Falling Kingdoms series, but it's a shame it didn't really evolve into something stronger. I definitely preferred when the conflict came from the relationships between the protagonists - there were dimensions to the action. Now that all the heroes get along and the antagonist is effectively a faceless evil the engagement isn't quite there for me.