Song of Silver, Flame Like Night

Song of Silver, Flame Like Night

2023 • 459 pages

Ratings11

Average rating3.7

15

I struggle to decide what i think about this book. It started out so strong and i had high hopes but the more i read, the less impressed I was. 
Let me start off by saying that the world building and the politics were done superbly well. I was so invested in the politics of the world and made sure i am not missing any details that might later end up being important. However, I kind to slowly but surely stopped caring past the 30-40% mark.

One of my gripes is the fact that we get info-dumps throughout the entire book. As much as i loved the world-building, I felt like i couldn't just relax and go with the flow because new information was given throughout the book at all times. Every 5% we are learning something new and it never! stops! The issue isn't that in itself cause yay! more world-building! BUT for me was that it felt like this book had very little to offer outside of it. For most of the book, nothing much happens aside from the very beginning and the very end of the book so the new info felt, to me, more like reading a textbook a times. Maybe that's just me? 

Another thing is that the characters felt so flat and uninteresting. Both the main characters, and all of the side ones. Side characters kept appearing but they had one, maybe two, traits assigned to them without offering anything else. The main characters definitely had more personality, but none that were interesting for me to read and explore. I felt zero attachment to them, or the plot itself. Deaths were happening, and were written to be emotional but as a reader you don't really care because nothing in the book made you care for them at all. The character deaths felt simply like plot devices for the main character's journey and growth and that feels cheap to me.

It was sadly also pretty predictable. The writing was very pretty though, alas a bit too flowery for me at times.

Unfortunately, as much as i loved the beginning and thought it was gonna be a solid 4*, it just ended up falling short and not really make me feel much at all. It will probably be the kind of forgettable read that you won't remember in a year. I definitely did not dislike it, but I can't say it really stands out amongst other books I read. Overall, I just don't really... care, and I really wanted to love it.

Would've been a 3 star if I didn't think the begining of the book was done so  well.

July 30, 2023Report this review