Eona

Book Title: Eona

Author: Alison Goodman

Series: Eon #2

Date Started: March 4th  2024

Date Completed: March 30th 2024

Genres: Fantasy, Adventure, Romance

Quality Rating: Four Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Four Star

Final Rating: Four Stars

Review:

It’s been a long time since I read Eon, the first book in this duology. Upon revisiting the series, I found it just as wide and sweeping, but perhaps less grounded than what I remember of the first one. Regardless, it was definitely fun and captures the same epic scale that made Eon so impactful.

One of the key things that stuck in my memory around this series was how it tackled adult themes in a mature way; sexual abuse, court politics, gender identity, religion and extremism are all foundations for the world Eona finds herself in, and this second book once again does a really good job of introducing younger readers to these themes and tropes often used in epic fantasy in a largely responsible way.

My main gripe with this novel was actually in its romantic distractions; it gets a bit lost in its love triangle (that it also never fully commits to). I seem to remember Eon was refreshingly free from the YA tropes of teenage angst in favour of a varied cast of characters all with complex platonic and romantic relationships rather than labels. That’s not to say that those relationships aren’t still there, but we end up seeing far more of Eona’s forbidden love than her friendships and fractured alliances. The ending also leant into this - feeling similar to a Disney fairytale - and I found it quite old fashioned from an earlier era of the YA genre.

Eona is one in handful of books I’ve set out to read this year to finish various book series I started as a child/teenager. I’m not setting out to read everything - there are some I have no interest in revisiting - but Eona was definitely around the top of my list and I’m glad I picked it up. It was an enjoyable experience, even if I was able to notice its pitfalls more easily as an older reader.