Enjoyable but Predictable

Let me start by saying I really enjoyed this book! I love a lot of the tropes she used. But if you've read Ember in the Ashes or Shadow & Bone, you've seen the characters and plots before. The twists aren't too surprising and once the characters are introduced, you kind of know their role in the story. That's not necessarily bad if you like the tropes. The author delivers on the tropes pretty well...
... except for the Big Bad Guy. You never really find out what his motives are or why does the bad things he does. Maybe that's a book 2 thing? It was a bit frustrating not knowing that.
I liked the setting but sometimes I wished I had the physical book because I got confused by some of the (Arabic?) terms that got casually tossed around and were pronounced differently by the 2 narrators. I liked having them in the story, and for the most part, the context clues defined the terms. But I did get a bit lost at times.
As always, these 2 narrators were FANTASTIC! But there were some production issues where you could hear cuts and edits.

10 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Every Arabic word is mangled.

Excellent and fresh and interesting story. But the mangling of every Arabic word is very annoying and detracts from the listening. If there are no narrators who can pronounce Arabic can the narrators at least find out how the Arabic words are pronounced?

49 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Leaves much to be desired

I’ll start with the positive. The performance of the narrators was impeccable. It is honestly what kept me going and helped me finish the book. I actually looked up Steve West to see what other books he’s narrated. There I give it a 5/5 stars

I saw that this book received A LOT of positive reviews and I couldn’t wait to read it. Fantasy is my absolute favorite genre and trust me when I say I’ve read A LOT of fantasy books. But I’m sad to say I’m disappointed.

This book felt...VERY rushed. The creativity was there; the lore and the story were all there. But the execution leaves much to be desired. I didn’t feel immersed into the world but rather, I felt thrown into it. I felt that pieces of lore were just thrown at the reader for the sake of explaining what is going on rather than letting the reader actually experience it. It leaves a lot of questions. I’d love to give examples but I don’t want to spoil anything. If a new concept was introduced it was similar to “oh btw this thing is in the world, there is nothing that led to this information so I’m just going to tell you this exists and you need to accept it”. There is a lack of foreshadowing, world building, and character development that I couldn’t make heads or tails out of. The characters were not developed well neither. One moment we have a character act a certain way, and the next the same character acts in a complete opposite manner. It was more frustrating than anything. I couldn’t get attached to any of the characters.

The book is not for those who like their fantasy fleshed out and detailed as they progress through the story.

4 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Liked it

The narrators were amazing👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 but Okay this audiobook was badly edited , Arabic is my first language so I really enjoyed the narration, I only wish it was better edited, I still don't have a clear opinion on this story, it was entertaining I can say that

4 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Audio Issues

I couldn't make it past the first few minutes because the audio was horrible. I sounded like the re-recorded sections and the quality wasn't the same, or it was a different narrator all together. I would rather give a standard copy of the book a go rather than listen to bad audio.

13 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Rough start narration/audio but worth getting past

The narrator obviously had recorded the main character’s name incorrectly but the sound engineer did a poor job with splicing in the fixes. It sounded like two separate female readers in the first part of the book. Listening in stereo gave me a headache because of the engineers sound placement. I endured because I have listened to this narrator before and enjoyed her reading and loved the story so I endured and it was well worth it.
This story is enchanting and is filled with twists of plot and emotion.

2 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Confusing. Irritating. Horrible

I couldn’t get into this book. The relationships between characters felt too unnatural, forced. The story and source of the lost magic didn’t make any sense. There were several major twists that seemed wrong somehow & they led to me rolling my eyes instead of thing “oh wow, didn’t see that coming.”

Overall, I disliked it. Very much.

6 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Es demasiado lento para mi gusto

La historia se centra en dos protagonistas. En primer lugar tenemos a Zafira, quien comienza un viaje para devolver la magia al mundo. Nuestra protagonista se viste de hombre para embarcarse en su aventura ya que las mujeres no son consideradas hábiles para pelear o siquiera defenderse. Por otro lado Nasir es el hijo de un rey totalmente inhumano, y necesita probarle a el, y a si mismo, que es capaz de alcanzar todo lo que su padre le pida, y lo que el rey quiere es el control de la magia.
Los dos son leyendas en el reino de Arawiya, pero ninguno de los dos quiere serlo en realidad, y ambos se verán enfrentados en busca de lo mismo, y deberán pelear para ver quien lo consigue.

Opinión personal:
Si les gustan los libros de fantasía llenos de acción, este no es el libro indicado. Los primeros y últimos 3 capítulos realmente tienen acción y te atrapan con los giros de trama, pero todo lo del medio me resultó muy aburrido. Realmente no pasa demasiado.
Es una historia super enfocada en los personajes, con personalidades muy diferentes pero un mismo objetivo terminan demostrándose que nada es lo que parece.
El libro tiene un romance que es extremadamente cliché, por lo que tampoco le he encontrado nada original.
El estilo de escritura es SUPER descriptivo, y encuentro que ese fue mi principal problema con la historia. Entiendo que quieran establecer el lugar y las personalidades de los personajes, pero cuando esto toma capítulos y capítulos simplemente hace que pierda el interés.
Me gusto mucho la ambientación en Arabia, ya que no he leído demasiados libros ahi, aunque la mezcla de nombres a veces se me hacía un poco confusa también.
Debo admitir que lo que más intrigada me dejó fue el final, quisiera saber que pasará en el siguiente, pero al no haberme gustado demasiado el ritmo del libro, no creo que realmente lo haga.
Si les gustan los libros con muchas descripciones del mundo, de los personajes y las intenciones de cada uno, sin duda se los recomiendo. Simplemente en este caso no fue para mi.

3 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

poor story, terrible audio

the story line is good, the narration is good, but the writings is terrible, so boring and redundant it drags, dont waste your time

3 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Incredible story!

I was fully drawn in to this fast paced story! My only issue is that is obvious that the first woman who read didn’t say “Zafira” correctly and you can tell when they had someone else come in and say the line with her name in it and that is sometimes distracting. But please don’t let it distract you too much from reading this great story!