Tag: Young Adult Fantasy

Down World by Rebecca Phelps

This book was provided to me by NetGalley in return for a fair review

Imagine Stranger Things crossed with Back to the Future all tied together with teen angst and the guilt of loss and secrecy. That’s pretty much the premise of Down World.

This is the story of Marina, a girl who lost her brother to a train accident four years previously. She is starting her sophomore year at public school; having gone to private school previously.

As the story unfolds, we discover that the high school, formerly a military base, has portals to different planes deep in its bowels that people have been using for years to visit alternate realities. That’s where things start to get very interesting, and Marina’s world changes drastically.

Ms. Phelps does a great job at world building and character development in this quick read. The foibles of high school life, and the navigation of potential romance make the “normal” portions of this book seem very believable.

Where I was disappointed, however, were the leaps in trying to rush certain portions of the story along to get to the next waypoint. Concepts and situations were introduced, not really ever resolved, and that stuck with me. For me, there is a wide swath of the “Down World” story that would have benefited from a better introduction, or even just an in-story summary of the bigger situation. There were opportunities to expound on this, but it was a path just not taken.

Book Review: War Storm (Red Queen #4)

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I went on a binge of this series and thought I would review the entire story arc here in the “final” book (though I should probably have done this in the first book).

With an incredibly envy-inducing talent for worldbuilding, Ms. Aveyard perfectly sets the scene for these novels (and novellas!). This series, and War Storm in particular, has an amazing foundation of landscapes, history, cultures and conflict that draw the reader in and masterfully set the stage for the tale that is about to unfurl.

At it’s core, the Red Queen series is a story of class conflict, control, and societal woes. One wonderful thing about these books, and Ms. Aveyard in particular, was that there was no pandering to the reader for the pitiable plight of any of the characters or situations. Each happenstance or situation seemed to be designed to help strengthen resolve or establish a disparity.

With War Storm we are dropped right into what we are told is the final wrap-up of this saga. Conflict still ravages the lands, and even more divides are starting to show. There is almost more behind the scenes conniving as there is open war and conflict. I often found myself checking how much of the book I had left when I would run into yet another new dire situation that seemed impossible to resolve by the end of this finale.

If you have made it through Red Queen, Glass Sword, and King’s Cage you will definitely not be disappointed by War Storm. Does it wrap everything up in a nice little bow? Absolutely not. Does it satisfy the reader enough to leave these Kingdoms behind? Again, no. You will, though, burn through this page-turner and feel satisfied that there is plenty of world left for Ms. Aveyard to approach again if she chooses.

I definitely hope she does.