Review: Czar

Czar by Julia Sykes
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Czar is the eighth book in the Impossible series, and although it works as a standalone novel I would not recommend reading it as such. It can be read as a standalone novel, but when you do so you get a very different feel to how the story is intended.

As a standalone novel, this will read as a dark romance. As the eighth book in a series, it will read as the dark and twisted story of the bad guy. It is not as dark as Mentor – the story of another bad guy in the series – but it certainly has a very different impact as a part of the series to the story as a standalone novel.

If I’m being completely honest, Czar is my least favourite story in the Impossible series. For those who have followed the series rather than reading this as a standalone novel, I know we’re not supposed to love the male lead in this considering all the wrong he has done, but I’d expected to like our female. As it was, I didn’t care much about either of them.

This would have been fine, considering their roles in the overall series, but their story was nowhere near as dark as I’d hoped it would be. I was hoping for something on par with Mentor, but this one merely brushed against the darkness I’d anticipated for it. It was interesting to see how this story played out, but it was not what I had expected it to be.

All in all, this is not the story I would recommend to people looking to find out more about Julia Sykes. It is worth reading if you’ve read the other books in the series, to ensure you get a fuller understanding of the world, but it is not the best representation of the author’s work.

Nevertheless, I am quite eager for book nine. I’m extremely curious to see how that one plays out.

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