introduction
It took me four attempts to really starting reading this book. I just couldn’t get past the first one or two pages.
It felt too dense in setting up a world and characters that sounded like gibberish to me.
I pushed on, mostly due to the popularity of the novel.
My final verdict: this will probably be picked up for a movie, however i feel we have already read a similar story.
major spoilers ahead
It turns out that the book mixes stories and concepts from other major books & movies in a (in my opinion) progressive-enhanced beauty package
here’s the list of prior art that i believe constitutes source material
harry potter
The entire formation academy setting, students learning a craft was already done by J.K.Rowling. Yarros did raise the stakes with battles to the death, which if you ask me, are really questionable: why are they killing students left and right, when there aren’t really enough of them ? some good performers were gone too in these battles, so not sure about the idea.
avatar
the dragon bonding concept is reminiscent of … well, the bonding that happens in avatar between rider and creature 🤷♂️
starship troopers
i felt a little bit of this movie here, in the combat scenes and the love story
wilbur smith
because of the love story arc between lovers from opposing factions, read A Sparrow Falls
game of thrones
well, the entire “nasty magical evil beings”, the wyverns, the “big boss” seem definitely based on the white walkers, the night king et. al.
the hunger games
because of the battles to the death, however in hunger games, there’s a method to the madness: it’s a competition between contestants in a tournament, with a single winner hunger games is based on Battle Royale anyways
romance novels
well, the whole rendering of the sex scenes, takes way too much and seems to target adolescents to be honest. they seem to come from popular romance novels (haven’t read one, but i’d guess that’s how they are portrayed in those books 😀)
conclusion
i’ll try to read the next book in the series, but i think it will take a lot of will power
