Empress

Aieeee..... The first 20% scored about 3 stars for me, but the book rapidly devolved into “Me believer. Me do what god want. Aieeeeeeee...”

It gets really difficult to give a crap about the characters when they are just blindly following whatever they think that their god is telling them to do. I get it, maybe once in a while, whatever, but every single time and every single thing? Aieeee..... Come on. Instead of rich, complex characters who are spiritual or religious, we get one-dimensional nothing characters who try to convince you that they have no will or desires of their own save for what their god wants.

Aieeeeee, such a tragedy.

If you got annoyed by all the “Aieee...” in this review, you're in for an AWESOME treat in this book. There's probably like 5-10 different instances of “Aieeeeeeeeeeeeeeee...” in every chapter – or that's how it seems. If there weren't, then “Tcha!” was there instead.

I always believe that books that evoke strong emotions shows how extraordinary it is. I am very much impressed by this book and I have enjoyed it very much.From the Kingmaker, Kingbreaker series, I've gotten a taste of how Karen Miller loves to paint and portray her world. I believe this one takes it to the next level. Others have said that she has sloppy writing and bad sentence structure. I say this is her style. She chooses to paint a different world with a subtly different language. The criticism for using the “god-“ prefix as being bland and unimaginative, I found to be just yet another example of how she chooses to portray the Mijaki society.The stress is on how very much their religion plays a part in every aspect of their lives. I originally found the odd accents and words in [b:The Innocent Mage 1051620 The Innocent Mage (Kingmaker, Kingbreaker, #1) Karen Miller http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327918882s/1051620.jpg 1561779] to be odd; but I grew to love it - it's an aspect of her character building, giving her characters an extra level of depth. It's the same with this book. Especially when you contrast it with the people of the Riven Kingdom (book 2), the contrast is that much stronger - from the way they live, the way they speak, and they way they interact. I find myself liking this approach to world-building.Her characters are all very strong and very well fleshed-out. From the arrogant, ambitious, and fanatical faith of Hekat, to the quiet acceptance and resilient faith of Vortka, they are all wonderful characters. Hekat, being the obvious protagonists, draws the most ire from readers. She's designed to draw hate, but I find her character extremely interesting. And given that the Mijaki are a warrior society threaded with a harsh and powerful religious belief, all her character are entirely believable. One only has to look at our real-world warrior societies to draw similarities, especially the Aztecs and the Incas with their ritual and frequent sacrifices.The next bit that I find extremely intriguing and thought-invoking is her magic system - the ambiguous nature of this god entity that so controls the lives of the people of Mijak. The way she describes their communing with god, their omen readings, and their tests of faith, we have parallels in our world as well, and most of them are not divine, but mere chemistry andd biology. Yet she also describes smiting, sacrifices turning to ash, healing, and enchanted stones; these are obviously magical in nature. So the ambiguity is this: does the magic come from the divine, or is the magic inherent in its people or perhaps just the godspeakers? I love this ambiguity (though obviously other may prefer more certainty), and I find it to entirely fitting given the society of the Mijakis. A strongly religious society would never stop to question the source of the magic. They would merely accept it as so.The finale sets the stage where Hekat's ambition (though she believes it to be faith) drives her to set her massive and brutal warhost loose upon an unsuspecting world, destroying all non-believers as sinners and demons. This act sets the stage for a rift between her and her devoted son, Zandakar, as well as the plot continuation into book 2.I've started book 2 and I'm already looking forward to the finale to see how she intends to pit two very different societies against one another.

Called it quits at chapter 31. Unrealistic character reactions, and the main character's development arc looks like an Evil Knievel ramp at the edge of the Grand Canyon- flat, a little up, then straight down. The protagonist's personality was so grating I couldn't bear to continue.

Great narration for the audiobook, though.

This was not as bad of a book as I thought it was going to be. Or, to put it simply, as I was told it was going to be. Perhaps that is because I read the reviews to see what was going to happen and, for what it was, it was not bad. Not to say that I am clamoring to read the sequels by any means.

The main problem with this novel, as everyone basically has stated, is Hekate. Although, I found mostly all characters repulsive to the point where I wanted Hekate to have them all stung by scorpions.

And that's my main issue with the book. Hekate is supposedly the villain in this series and, as this book went on you can see why, I felt that the characters around her were just as awful as she was if not more. There was generally no one to cheer for in this book and as it went on, the reading became a chore with, not just the characters, but also the dialogue and the religion.

The religion was talked about a few times in the beginning then as the book went on the author decided to hit us over the head with it. I feel like praying to a scorpion my own damn self!

Then there's the ending, which I admittedly didn't think would come, it's abrupt. Something happens then it just cuts off. Now you can argue that this is to merely get anticipation for the second book, but there are better ways to do that. You can complete a story without just cutting yourself off in the middle of a scene. If Brandon Sanderson can do it in his Stormlight Archive books then why couldn't Karen do it?

All in all this is an average book, nothing overly terrible as I thought as was going to get, but not exactly good. Which rates on the “meh” scale with me.

Since I was fortunate, read dumb, enough to get the omnibus version, I read on to the second book. I have heard it is an improvement over the first.