Namera [The Literary Invertebrate]'s Reviews > Violet Made of Thorns

⤅ The chances of this book living up to The Cruel Prince were never high, but I'm still a bit disappointed.

On its own it's by no means a bad book, and I would probably have enjoyed it a lot more had my expectations not been so high. As it stands, though, the comparison to TCP is a hindrance rather than a help.

⤅ PLOT

18-year-old Violet Lune is a Seer, able to foretell people's future through touch. At the age of eleven she saved the life of young Prince Cyrus Lidine when she saw his death in a vision; he was her ticket to fame and fortune, away from her old life of drudgery. Fast forward almost a decade, and they're no longer friends. He views her as a manipulative liar, tool of his father, while she thinks of him as a weak dandy.

An old prophecy states that unless Cyrus gets married, terrible things will happen. So far, he's refused to do his duty - until his father decides to get involved. Using Violet, his pet Seer, the king arranges Cyrus's marriage to a mysterious noblewoman named Raya. But Raya isn't what she seems, and Violet and Cyrus's own hostility can't stop them from working to uncover what's going on.

Okay, that - in a nutshell - is the plot. Unfortunately (to start with the negatives ):

❌ The plot becomes pretty confusing, pretty quickly. It's easy enough to follow the bare bones of it, namely the arranged marriage stuff and Cyrus's prophecy. But then random elements started throwing me. Like, what's up with the Witch of Nightmares - how does she suddenly come into it? And the stuff about the Fate who's not a Fate, Violet's dreams, etc? Most of it didn't fit very well together and wasn't explained well.

❌ Linked to the above: there's no emotional impact to anything which happens. We had a bunch of plot twists, but because by then the plot itself was confusing, they completely lacked the punch they should have had. You know at the end of TCP, when there's that jaw-dropping plot twist with Cardan and the coronation? That left me with my mouth hanging open, and I expected the same here. I didn't get that, because I'd stopped following what was actually happening.

❌ In most places, the writing lacks intensity. Not everywhere - I'll expand on this later - but in for example Cyrus and Violet's relationship, there was no sense of real emotionality. Hate transitioned to lust/potential love without me feeling either. I guess it's hard to explain what I mean, but what I'm saying is that I never connected with any of the characters, or managed to immerse myself in Violet's head enough to feel what she was feeling (as should have happened). Partially that's because the Cyrus/Violet relationship, the novel's emotional core, relies heavily on the characters' years of prior knowledge. These years are discussed very briefly - we're thrown straight into a contemporary setting where the characters have already known each other for ages, have a ton of history together, but that history is barely alluded to and rarely detailed. Result: a relationship I'm not really feeling. This applies to other relationships too, like Cyrus with Dante, or Violet with Dante.

⤅ THE POSITIVES

✔️ I really like Violet's characterisation. She's a wonderfully manipulative antiheroine. Jude from TCP is still my favourite, because there I FELT her internal moral dilemmas and I've already explained that I couldn't make the same connection with Violet. Still, I like the concept of Violet. Cyrus is a little harder - he's alternately portrayed as a relentless flirt or an honourable boy, two things I'm not sure mesh well together. Again though I like the concept of him.

✔️ There's some great prose in his book. At times it strives a little too hard to be lyrical, and crosses the line into eyeroll territory, but when it stays on the right side of the line it's great.

⤅ OVERALL

Right now I'm not sure if I'll read the sequel, to be honest. It's a shame this book couldn't live up to its high billing, but there are plenty of other books recently I've DNFed, so at least I made it to the end here. I'm sure I'll be in the minority and everyone else will love it.