Review: Glass Sword - Victoria Aveyard

3 out of 5 stars.

I wanted to love this one more and I wanted to give if at least 4 stars, but I keep thinking about the things that bothered me and even though the last 25% of the book completely rehooked me and made me certain I will pick up the next book as soon as possible, I'm afraid I have to stick to this 3 star rating.

This book failed me. There were a number of disappointments and after truly enjoying Red Queen and waiting for this sequel in anticipation I feel let down. This is not what I wanted it to be.

The main character, Mare Barrow bored me with her often repetitive and tiresome narrative. She was far too much of a self obsessed special snowflake in this book and I found her an utterly confused and confusing mess. She could have at least been consistent and yet she seemed to swing between being a useless husk of a girl, reluctant to hurt people and then suddenly having almost omnipotent power and going on a bloodthirsty killing spree. I'm afraid I just couldn't read this as character development. The only redeeming feature was the fact that Mare's 'friends' did not allow her to be so stupid all the time, and yet 

The plot meandered and was bogged down for a lot of the book and then the action/battle scenes were poorly executed and confusing. When a couple of pivotal (to me) characters were killed and I was so confused that I had to go back and reread the passage a couple of times and yet I still didn't feel much emotion I realised that this book just hadn't grabbed me. It wasn't doing what it was supposed to do. I wanted to be able to cry and rage and have compete empathy for the characters and yet... I didn't. The supporting cast had become one dimensional, unimportant both to Mare and to me. 

The last 25% of this book promised better things, and obviously the cliff-hanger ending and my own nature of never leaving things unfinished will lead me to read the next book, but I will be going in with my eyes wide open and far lower expectations.