Review: Glass Sword

Glass Sword by Victoria Aveyard
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Many people adore the Red Queen series, so I decided to jump in and give it a try. I was tentative about diving in, having read mixed reviews – some seem to love it whereas others hate it. It’s very much a series that seems to divide readers, leaving me worried as to where I would fall. In truth, I wasn’t overly crazy about Red Queen. I gave it a four-star rating in the end, but I feel as though it was an overly generous rating. Nevertheless, I decided to give the second book a read.

I had been hoping Glass Sword would wow me, would really suck me into the series, as book one ended in such a way that I expected some pretty mind-blowing things. Unfortunately, I was really disappointed by this second book. I enjoyed this one nowhere near as much as I enjoyed the first book, and while things towards the end did pick up it wasn’t enough for me to give this one more than a three-star rating. In fact, having read Glass Sword I’m unsure as to whether I wish to continue this series at all. I hate doing so, but I feel as though this is one of those situations where I may end up using the internet to find out what happens – I want to know how everything comes together, but I’m not really invested enough to read two more books.

You see, like the first book this one took a long time to get into. It shouldn’t have, as it’s the second book in a series that ended on quite the cliff-hanger. We should have been thrown straight into the thick of things, yet everything was so slow. We got introduced to a lot more of the world, which was fun, along with meeting new characters, but it moved at such a slow pace. I feel as though hardly anything happened, which was rather disheartening considering the length of this book. It’s not a long book by the standard of some of my fantasy reads, but it was much longer than it should have been for all that happened.

Then, what did happen, I didn’t care much for. Things failed to hit me in the way they should have, with things being rather anticlimactic and failing to hit the emotional spot. There was such potential, and I feel as though this one failed to live up to it. We spent far too much time listening to the same inner monologues, reading about the same things, when there were much bigger things to be dealt with. The things I wanted to learn more about, the things that could have hit hard, were brushed over.

Overall, I was really disappointed by this sequel. Although the ending left me interested in seeing what comes next, I doubt I’ll be reading on as I’m not invested at all.

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