Book Review #6: The Glass Spare

Hello my fellow bookworms! I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend! I'm already back at school, but it was great to go home for the long weekend, see my family and friends, work a little bit and most importantly: read!

I went home this weekend knowing I wasn't going to have too much in the way of homework, so I was more than ready to get some reading done! I had a lot of blog work planned as well, and I'm happy to say I got a lot done! But I read the entirety of a book this weekend which got me really excited about reading (as if I'm ever not) AND I finished my GoodReads reading challenge for 2017! I was worried I wasn't going to get it done, but I'm glad I finished it early!

So today I'm going to be reviewing a book that is brand, spankin' new! We're going to be talking about... drumroll please.... (if you haven't looked at the title of this blog post...The Glass Spare by Lauren DeStefano! It was this month's OwlCrate book and once I unboxed mine, I read the blurb and was hooked! So I spent the entire weekend reading this book and I'm super excited to share it with you!

So let's get into it!

First of all, I have to say this genre of fantasy courts and kingdoms has probably been my favorite thing to read this year (ahem...Royal Bastards, ACOTAR, Throne of Glass etc...). This book fit right in with this niche and it was exactly what I was craving. Second, this concept was absolutely, bloody, brilliant. I had never heard of this idea before but I was immediately enthralled and couldn't wait to read it! So for a basic summary, this girl Wil is a princess but her father is a really cruel king that uses her as a spy. One day she discovers that she has the ability to turn living things to gemstone, and one she accidentally kills someone with her new power she's forced to flee her kingdom. On her travels she meets a banned prince who is trying to stop the war between their two kingdoms.

Is that not a super cool idea???

Well in execution it was even more brilliant! This story literally had me enraptured and I loved the way the plot moved. I have to say, as I was reading I was not a huge fan of the writing and somethings were really inconsistent, but I was still so gripped by the story that I couldn't stop reading.

So let's talk about some things that I didn't like about The Glass Spare:

The writing was...hmmmmm......filled with purple prose. I love a really poetic line or a really lovely description once in a while like every sane person. But with this book, it was every other line. The most mundane things could be described and it was just oozing floweriness. It was too much. It got to the point where I was rolling my eyes because things felt to cliche. She also used really big, complicated words randomly. Like what in tarnation is somnambulated? Who knows, but someone in that book did it. That was a major disappointment for me because it showed DeStefano's strength as a writer and that she can come up with really lovely ways to say things, but it was just way too much it made the writing dramatic.

This book didn't have a map. We all know that my one tried and true rule, is that if a book has a map in the first ten pages it has an extremely good chance of being a good read. This is not to say that the opposite is true, that if a book doesn't have a map that it won't be good. For example, this book was a good read and didn't have a map, but it would have been even better if it did have one. From the beginning DeStefano starts talking about all of these different places in the world she has created, but I needed a map to process them and really understand where everything was in relation to each other.

There were certain characters that were really underdeveloped and others that were superrrrr developed, one of those inconsistencies that I was talking about. For example, the book starts and the king is evil. Undoubtedly evil. For no reason. There's no explanation we never really see him do anything that is evil, but oh he's evil god damnit. Honestly, he just seemed like a King trying to expand his empire, which is kind of what kings do. Her mom also was a peasant girl who magically became a queen by looking at a young king. And she kept getting described as a "dreamer" which quickly became synonymous with an airhead or a really fragile and sensitive person. ALSO how can an author make her protagonist so dependent on all of her brothers EXCEPT ONE. That's just rude. Also we only see him like three times throughout the entire flipping book but everyone is convinced he's the actual spawn of satan. It just didn't add up.

I promise I only have a few more inconsistencies that bothered me. One of them is a bit minor, but it just was something that was in the back of my mind throughout most of the book. A lot of the technology and the attention around the technology bothered me throughout the book. For example, Wil had this set of data goggles and you could basically look at something and it would give you data about it like a wikipedia page in your pocket. But Wil somehow had these goggles, when her father didn't believe in technology and her kingdom was actually really behind the times in these sorts of innovations. Which also makes me suspicious that her kingdom could be the most powerful and wealthy without the advanced technology of other kingdoms. It just doesn't seem realistic considering that most often in history, the more technologically advanced nation on either side of a war tends to win. Also, there were these lengthy descriptions of all of these cool forms of technology like the data goggles, but taking a photograph (which takes a "few seconds") is too complicated to be practiced in these kingdoms. I feel like especially now a days, photography and digital photographs are sort of rudimentary technologies, but in The Glass Spare were just too complicated to be used. Just a few things that didn't really make sense to me.

And finally, the last thing that bothered me about this book (really I promise) is just that it felt like the author just handed a lot of things to us. I didn't really get to figure things out for myself and come to my own conclusions. For example, when Wil first turns things to gemstone, I was already trying to think of different reasons why this could be happening or what triggered it. But not a second later Wil blurts out "I think it happens when my heart rate goes up." And that was the answer. First of all, this is happened to her only once, and I don't think that she would be totally aware enough to realize "oh wow my heart was racing that must have done it". The DeStefano could have let it build up, let us see her turn a few more things to stone, let us think a bit, and then have Wil realize that every time her heart rate went up this happened. When she would hand key pieces of information to us, it didn't really engage me or keep me invested because I wasn't actively thinking about what was happening in the story and trying to figure out what was happening. It also made the story move almost too quickly because instead of letting things build up and naturally develop, they were cut short by just providing information.

Ok now my griping is over and we can talk about what I liked about this story!

I loved, love, love the title. The Glass Spare. Not only was it totally fitting (duh), but it also talked about something we don't necessarily focus on in the world of Fantasy YA. Usually, books like this focus on the heir or the crown princess, or even the bastard, but we rarely get to see the spares spend some time in the limelight. So I was really intrigued to see a book focus on the idea of the spare and focus on what honestly is a really expendable person in a royal family. I know that there really aren't many other words to describe a royal that isn't directly in line for the throne, but for some reason I really liked the use of the word 'Spare'. There was one line that stood out to me that I kept turning over in my mind while I was reading, and it was something along the lines of 'the heir and the spare'. I would have loved to have seen a title reference somewhere in the book, but regardless I loved the title.

I really liked Wil as a character. I find with a lot of female characters, some can be way too bad-ass, while others can be really annoying and whiney. I felt that Wil was a good mix of both. She kept her own interests in mind throughout the book, and even though you could tell she wanted to help Loom and his kingdom, that she really was also helping him in order to help himself. I found it super easy to relate to her, and I felt like I was living her pain with her whenever she remembered Gerdie or Owen.

Even though it's kind of overused, I actually really loved that they were sworn enemies. I think what made this case work was that it was a little bit different. Normally when you have two enemies forced to come together for the same cause, they both know that they're enemies and are really stubborn and don't want to be together and somehow end up falling in love. However, in this book Loom didn't know they were from enemy kingdoms, and so it didn't need that obligatory tension.

The world building was really amazing throughout this book. Everyone knows I'm a sucker for a really well developed world and a place within the book to escape to. I felt like I knew my way around the castle in Arrod, I could feel myself in the streets Brayshire, and I personally would love a vacation to the hidden island castle. The descriptions really brought the story to life and it was like I was seeing the places Wil and Loom traveled too in my mind and it was overall a really lovely experience to read this book. I felt like this book in particular was something out of a dream. The world was so lush and vibrant but at the same time the magic and fantastical elements really were enchanting.

And obviously, I think my favorite part of this whole book was the plot. The adventure never really stopped and there was always another struggle to overcome but still a really pressing issue overarched the entire plot line. The end was by far my favorite because so many more things made sense by the end. I loved the reason for Wil's powers, though it was a really slow burn to get to the explanation. I'm talking slow. Like last 20 pages of the book slow! It was not at all what I was expecting to happen but it set up a continuation into another book, and I've already started formulating some theories! But the end actually clarified some of the inconsistencies throughout the book. One in particular, relates to the romance which really didn't make much sense to me throughout the read, and didn't quite feel right. I'm not going to spoil it because I thought that the way DeStefano did it was such a good twist that I want you guys to be surprised just as much as I was. I was frustrated that Loom didn't find out the truth about Wil's background by the end of the story, but the end really made up for some of the books other shortcomings.

This book is actually part of a series or trilogy (I'm not sure which) but GoodReads has The Glass Spare listed as The Glass Spare #1. So now that the plot is really moving by the end of the book, this means that we have more to look forward to! Unfortunately it will probably be another year or so until we get another update on Wil and Loom but I think it will definitely be worth the wait!

So I think that's about it for the review of The Glass Spare by Lauren DeStefano! This book was really hard to rate, because I just had so many thoughts on this one. As you can see this is a really long review and you're probably thinking "God dammit Kayla end it already", I'm sorry I'm trying. Originally I planned on giving this book a 4 star review because I oddly loved it so much and I thought the plot and the concept were amazing. But as I was writing this review I realized how many things bothered me. Are plot and concept really enough to brush all those other issues under the rug? As you know, I take notes in my phone on every book that I read and there were so many more little things that bothered me about this book that I didn't even cover in this review. So I think with all of this in mind, it's only fitting to give The Glass Spare a 📚📚📚 out of 5!

If you love fantasy, and courts and kingdoms, or even quick reads I would recommend this book! It also may be that I'm just really nit picky and the things that bothered me, may not have been on your radar! I think this series has a lot of potential and will turn out really, really well! This book came in the November OwlCrate this year which was I kid you not the BEST box I have received! If you can snag it from the past book boxes shop, get going because it was amazing! They're running Black Friday/ Cyber Monday sales right now so you might be able to get it on discount! The Harry Potter and A Court of Mist and Fury, and let's be honest the Game of Thrones items were all incredible and were my favorites from the box!

Have you read Lauren DeStefano's The Glass Spare yet? What did you think? If I liked it what should I read next? Let me know your thoughts down in the comments below! And as always if you want to see me read anything new let me know!

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-Kayla