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| Taken from Good Reads |
This book is about a princess trusted with special destiny in a fantasy world. Sounds boring already. The characters could have been so stale. The gender role bashing could have been eye roll worthy. The culture blending could have been so fake and over done. But it wasn't.
From the first page Carson ignored pretenses practically required for writing this kind of story. Young princess in an arranged marriage that isn't prattling about how unfair life is and how she wants true love? My hopes soared. A princess that isn't a size zero and has trouble with over eating? Normal sibling rivalry? I got scared in the next chapter I would be let down because everything good was in chapter one.
No. Nothing let me down, well...nothing serious.
Spoilers may exist from this point on-Read at your own risk.
The first showing casing of Elisa's intelligence comes when she takes her sister's advice. The sister she doesn't like. The sister that is better at politics than Elisa. More than two thirds of young adult heroines would never do that. They have to be free and learn from their mistakes and yada yada yada.
The attitude that Elisa has toward her arranged married and Alejandro is jaw dropping-ly appropriate. She doesn't balk at it, she doesn't have false expectations about insta love, and she is clear about her desires. She tells her husband/acquaintance right off the bat-"I don't want to be intimate tonight."
What a novel idea, communicate with words your feelings/preferences/control instead of acting crazy. Since Alejandro isn't a scum bag, he completely respects that.
There is no insta love with anyone. Love isn't even central to the story-plenty happens without it, like war council, kidnapping, battles, losing important people.
Oh and a mystical god gave her a belly jewel that makes her special and appropriately, she is pious, yet struggles with her faith. Some people think that makes this Christian Lit. I'm going go with no, while they might have a lot of common elements I am sensing Carson is just accurately portraying someone that had something supernatural happen to her in which her society has an explanation that works. The religion portrayed in this book has common themes with Christianity but I would not say parallels it.
I also love how Elisa isn't an island. I mentioned this before, but Elisa doesn't ignore everyone's advice and just do in heart what she feels is best without reasons to back it up. She listens to the people that she respects and she learns without having to make disastrous mistakes. Yet, you never feel that Elisa is a puppet because she makes her own choices after mulling things over plus she has character growth over the course of the novel. She starts out self centered and then starts caring about the people around her more. She learns about her own abilities and their limits. She makes mistakes because she isn't experienced and some have disastrous results. This makes her worthy of role model status.
Now the other characters are not as well developed. Rosario, her nurse, Cosme, Humberto...they are multi-faceted but I don't think they get the depth they deserve. Hopefully in future novels this will change. Alejandro did get a fair amount of depth but without true exploration. This is actually a good choice on Carson's part because there wasn't time in Elisa's life to truly get to know him. Elisa, and the audience, learned that he was complex but that was it.
Major Spoiler- I think Humberto's death was appropriate. Too often love interests are saved by the author just because they are love interest. The world is cruel, war is brutal, and killing your enemies' treasured ones is effective. Not killing them removes the horribleness of war.
Now, Elisa started off the novel overweight but then she goes through a tough physical trial and slims down. A lot people also had a problem with that because she changed herself. That is ridiculous. Elisa grew as a human being to have more self control and endurance and people are mad about that? Elisa is stronger for this change, not weaker. I applaud Carson for this realistic choice.
Some of the bad things-a few haired brained schemes worked when they shouldn't have but this fantasy so I'll let it go. The antagonist were not super developed and there should have been more time spent developing them, especially individual leaders. {SPOILER} And finally, after being made Queen Regent over the land Elisa carves off a part for a new country and makes a new Queen. Woah. No way is the Quorum going to be peaceful about that or the public.
NO SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT.
I will be reading more of this series, I will be reading more from Carson, and hopefully if just gets better. I will give this book 4.5/5 roses for good writing and refreshing characters.
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