Realm Breaker

As a big fan of the Red Queen series, I was very excited to read this new start to a series by Victoria Aveyard. I went into the novel having no idea what the premise was. Overall, I think this was a good start to the series, even though it had a slow start.

This book follows a whole cast of characters. There are a lot of POVs. Essentially, there are these rips in the world called Spindles that allow access to different realms. There is a man and a wizard that are going around trying to open a lot of these and bring over monsters to destroy and/or control this realm. A merry band of misfits joins together to try to stop them.

The biggest downfall to this book is how long it took to get going. There is so much lore that had to be told, that the first 250 pages or so felt like one massive info dump. Not much happened. However, the lore was interesting enough to keep me reading. The second half of the book was action packed, and I found myself really enjoying it. Still, half a book of boring info dumping is not the greatest, hence my 3 star rating.

This book had one of my favorite tropes of a found family, and I really enjoyed this one. I think the characters were well thought out and their inter-relationships within the group were unique and fun to read. The plot, once it got going, was swift and exciting. I think that the lore of this world has set up for a great series. I'm very excited to read the second one. Now that the reader knows the whole backstory to this world, I'm hoping the pace will be accelerated for the rest of the series.

All in all, I would recommend this book. I completely understand if reading 250 pages of not much action isn't your jam, but I will say that I think the pay off is worth it. Excited for the next one!

TW: alcohol, animal abuse, animal death, blood, death, demons, gore murder, poisoning, violence, war