Publication Date: August 7th, 2019
Read: January 14th - 15th
Rating: 3.5/5 stars
goodreads
The story of why I read this book goes all the way back to like, one or two years ago, when I was tasked with writing a bullet point description of it for a blind book display. You know, those displays bookstores and sometimes libraries do where they wrap the book in brown paper and describe it with some bullet points, and then you buy the book without knowing exactly what it is? Yeah. So! For some reason, out of every book I wrote a description for, this is one of the ones that vaguely stuck in my mind, and when I saw it available on Libby, I was like "Why not?"
Why not! I had fun with this book, even if it wasn't the best book of all time. At this point, I don't feel like I'll continue on to the sequel, but I don't regret reading this one. It was pretty fun, if also flawed.
I thought it would be fun to evaluate the accuracy of the bullet point description I wrote now that I've read the book, so here's the original description, with my commentary in green parantheses:
- First in a Series (true, but more specifically it's the first in duology)
- Impoverished Seaside Village (kind of true, except it's not a seaside village it's like, a floating village on top of the sea. It wasn't really clear that that was the situation until I read the book, though)
- Prince Choosing a Princess (yeah. Arguably "elders choosing a princess for a prince" but yeah, basically)
- Competition (This is probably one of my more inaccurate bullet points. The most beautiful girl in the village [as decided by the elders] is the one who gets picked. It's not exactly a competition, even though it kind of is competitive)
- Twins (accurate! The main character is, in fact, a twin)
- Switching Identities (True!)
- Royal Court (True! But little did I know, it's a not a regular royal court, it's a creepy spooky royal court inside a mountain with basically no windows)
- Political Intrigue (kind of true, but also the intrigue was one of the weaker parts of the book, so eh. An attempt was made, and my bullet point acknowledges this)
- Royal Brothers (there sure are two brothers who are princes and therefore royal)
- Perfect for Fans of Red Queen and The Selection (maybe? I have actually never read The Selection, and I didn't like Red Queen, so I was guessing here based on the fact that all three of these books involve a normal/poor girl getting sort of whisked away to a life of royalty where there's also some degree of political maneuvering going on.)
Now that we've gone over the bullet points, I guess we should go over the actual plot. Nor and Zadie are twin sisters who live on a floating village. Everyone from their village is forbidden to set foot on land, for reasons having to do with the history/mythology of their world. They do a lot of fishing and pearl diving, but the rare pearls their region is known for are becoming less common as the oysters are over fished, plus they're not fetching as much money as they used to. The only way for someone to legally leave this village is to be chosen as the next bride of the prince of Ilara. Nor knows she won't be chosen, because only the most beautiful girl can be chosen, and she has a small scar on her face that renders her imperfect.
As everyone expects, Nor's twin sister Zadie (who is perfectly beautiful, unlike Nor) is the one chosen to be the prince's bride. But! She doesn't want to go. She's in love with a childhood friend - the same exact childhood friend their parents decided to betroth Nor to as soon as Zadie was chosen as the new princess. Desperate to avert her fate, Zadie takes drastic steps and injures herself with a dangerous jellyfish, so that she'll have scars that will disqualify her from the whole princess thing.
Only then, it turns out that sending a less-beautiful replacement princess-to-be will be seen as an insult and could result in the whole village's fresh water supply being cut off, so it's determined that Nor will assume Zadie's identity and role as the prince's bride (with the help of a special cosmetic "stain" that hides her scar) in order to keep up appearances.
But of course, once she gets to the Ilaran capital, things aren't how she expected. Nor thought being the prince's bride would give her more freedom than she had at home in Varenia, but she's actually even more restricted in the dark, mountainous palace. Also, the previous Varenian queen is dead (or is she?), and the prince she's betrothed to is sadistic, cruel, and so obsessed with finding a cure to the curse he thinks he's under that he's willing to let children die as collateral damage. Nor begins to realize that the power structures that are in place between Ilara and Varenia only exist to allow Ilara to exploit Varenia (we love a class consciousness slay), and looks for ways to prevent the prince from exploiting Varenia even more.
The prince she's engaged to also has a hot half-Varenian younger brother who's the real love interest of this book, but I don't feel like I need to talk about him much. Not much time is spent on developing his relationship with Nor, so I was not invested in them as a couple. It came off like Nor just thought he was hot and liked him better than his brother because he wasn't a sadist who lets children die for ~science. We need more to recommend love interests besides the fact that they aren't their evil brothers!
(Also, I've forgotten both of the princes' names already. Oops...)
I really enjoyed the first half of this book, where we're exploring Nor's life in Varenia. Nor's love for and protectiveness of Zadie felt real, and so did her frustration with her mother, who has spent their lives obsessing over their beauty, all so that one of them would eventually be chosen to be the next Ilaran princess. The childhood friend character whose name I don't remember was a nice change of pace from a lot of characters in his archetype, mainly because he has feelings for Zadie instead of having a doomed crush on Nor. Also, I liked the setting of the floating ocean village.
The castle-carved-into-a-mountain setting was cool too, but I just felt like the plot got a lot weaker once we got to Ilara. Most of the book after that point felt like it was Nor trying to figure out what to do about the evil prince and how to get in contact with her childhood friend. Just not super compelling, given the interesting set up.
Right after finishing this book, I felt like I might read the sequel, but that impulse has largely faded. I'm content to leave this book as it is, especially after looking through some of the sequel's reviews to get a sense of the vibe. The vibe is: either we're glad this was only a duology and didn't have a filler middle installment, or we think this should have been a trilogy because we didn't have enough time to develop all the ideas. Either way, it sounds like people were a bit whelmed by the sequel, and I don't have time for books I know will whelm me...except maybe Reached by Ally Condie.
