Pages: 364
Published: August 28, 2017
Publisher: Random House Children’s Publishing
Synopsis: Daughter of immortals.
Princess Diana longs to prove herself to her legendary warrior sisters. But when the opportunity finally comes, she throws away her chance at glory and breaks Amazon law—risking exile—to save a mortal. Diana will soon learn that she has rescued no ordinary girl, and that with this single brave act, she may have doomed the world.
Daughter of death.
Alia Keralis just wanted to escape her overprotective brother with a semester at sea. She doesn’t know she is being hunted by people who think her very existence could spark a world war. When a bomb detonates aboard her ship, Alia is rescued by a mysterious girl of extraordinary strength and forced to confront a horrible truth: Alia is a Warbringer—a direct descendant of the infamous Helen of Troy, fated to bring about an age of bloodshed and misery.
Together.
Two girls will face an army of enemies—mortal and divine—determined to either destroy or possess the Warbringer. Tested beyond the bounds of their abilities, Diana and Alia must find a way to unleash hidden strengths and forge an unlikely alliance. Because if they have any hope of saving both their worlds, they will have to stand side by side against the tide of war. (Goodreads)
My Bookish Thoughts:
This book has been sitting on my shelf for such a long time. I remember that I bought it right when it came out because of the cover art on this book. It is absolutely gorgeous. Also, it was written by Leigh Bardugo whom I have read in the past so, I had rather high expectations for this book.
Honestly, I was quite disappointed. I wanted this to be more of an origin tale about wonder woman and how the Amazons came to be. But, this was not that at all. In fact, I felt that Diana wasn’t even the main character of the novel. This was quite a let down for me.
If you are expecting this to be solely about Wonder woman, I have to say you may be disappointed with this book. As it really follows our main character Alia, who is wanted dead because she is supposed to be the next warbringer, meaning she causes people around her to become angry which leads to the outbreak of war. Diana is determined to find a way to save Alia from the curse of being the warbringer.
This book wasn’t terrible but if you are a fan of Leigh Bardugo, I feel you may notice that the writing style in this book seems to be a little forced and not her regular enticing writing as in “Shadow and Bone”. I didn’t feel any connection to the characters and honestly could have cared less if anyone died in the book. Also, the storyline was overly complicated and it really didn’t need to be. I think that if the book just told the history of Diana and her entrance into the human world halfway through the novel, the story would have been more enjoyable. I wanted more backstory on her life as an Amazon, vs Diana running around New York. Diana, had the potential of being this kick-ass character. And although she had a few high action scenes in this novel, I felt it didn’t really do her justice.
This is the second time that I picked this book up. The first time that I tried reading it I couldn’t get past the first chapter. This time around it helped that I listened to the audiobook because I feel like I would have personally dnf’ed it had I been reading the physical copy. It honestly didn’t capture my attention from the very beginning and I only continued with the audiobook because it was going by a lot faster. I noticed that I had to relisten to some portions because I would miss a few details. But, it held my attention better as an audiobook.
This book was just meh. I’m glad to have it off my TBR (To be read) shelf. But, it just was disappointing, it dragged in a lot of parts and I couldn’t relate to any of the characters or world building in this book. This book had so much potential, as being an origin story but it just felt like nothing really happened for the majority of the book. The major action-packed scene occurred with 21 minutes left in the audiobook. And the ending of the book seemed to just resolve way to easily and quickly.
In conclusion, it was just meh… I loved that Young Adult literature tried to play around with iconic D.C. Characters but, it just ended up being flat. If you loved the movie “Wonder Woman”, I would honestly skip this read. But, the cover was HELLA pretty!!!
With Warm Cups of Tea and Just A Few More Chapters,
Rina
marinainw0nderland 