The Riven Kingdom

After the awesomeness of book one, book two feels dull, especially considering it's very typical medieval, European, patriarchal, semi-religious setting. The plot on its own was fine - your typical girl overcomes sexist, political, and religious opposition - but with the setting and a cast of rather uninteresting characters, makes this a very safe, and thus plain, story.

The Riven Kingdom is about the struggle of power within a kingdom who has lost its king and its two male heirs. Females are viewed as being weaker than males, with the church championing this viewpoint. It's state versus church. The plot follows Rhian as she escapes church control and wrests back the reins of power.

Rhian swings between being a spoilt, whinny girl to a bossy, arrogant woman with an attitude problem. I suppose she's meant to be flawed and tries to do her best to be strong, but it came across as annoying and not likeable (pretty irritated by the sheer amount of “Oh, Alasdair” from her).

Helfred comes across as a weaker variant of Vortka, and that's unfortunate. Zandakar's around and he's all right, except I'm not sure how I feel about those around picking up on his language mannerisms instead of the other way round. Dexterity (a weird name if you ask me) and Ursa are fine characters, just not very stand-out.

Like I mentioned above, the plot is fine - a peaceful and neutral kingdom looking at a potential civil war scenario - what I didn't like were its characters. This is unfortunate, considering how I've liked rooted for Asher (Kingmaker, Kingbreaker series), Hekat, and their surrounding casts. The ones in this book are not very interesting and somewhat one-dimensional.

The over-arching plot is coming along nicely, making me look forward to the inevitable good versus evil conflict. Hekat is on the evil side obviously, and I'm going to root for Hekat (but not quite Dmitrak). Unfortunately, this typical medieval kingdom is probably going to prevail instead. Definitely want to see how it ends.