Title: Crown of War and Shadow
Author: J.R. Ward
Series: Kingdoms of the Compass #1
Thank you to J.R. Ward, Tor, and NetGalley for allowing me to read a free ARC in exchange for an honest review.
I’ve heard good things about J.R. Ward for years, saw she was hopping on the romantasy trend, and figured that’d be as good an introduction to her as any. But then I decided to try her famed vampire series (Black Dagger Brotherhood) before reading this….and hated it. Didn’t even finish the first book. So I might have put off reading this ARC for a month. Or three.
I didn’t DNF this one, but I was tempted.
The narrative’s most frustrating and pervasive problems were poor character development and its lack of a focused, refined plot. It’s not that the book should have been shorter, though it probably could have been, it’s that it spent too much time on the unimportant and not enough on the important.
Every waking moment was described in unnecessary detail. So much landscape and clothing description. So much redundant inner monologue. All the words spent on unnecessary detail would have been better spent on character backstory, character development, and relationship development. Sure, a few things needed to be kept secret, but the narrative didn’t have to try so hard to hide things from us; its obvious evasion just cultivated ire. If you want to keep a secret, leave no one alive give us plenty of other information so we won’t realize something’s missing. Misdirection, not omission.
We spent so much time on relatively unimportant events and places—the skystalker, the ogres, the Outpost, that stupid gate, the dungeons—that the events that were actually important lacked context, relevance, buildup, and stakes. Everything feels so urgent in the beginning, but it’s hard to maintain that urgency when the characters have plenty of time to dink around with prolonged denial and petty squabbles, and nothing happens to raise the stakes: Demons are afoot! Demons are afoot! But we never see them, so the threat of them weakens pretty quick. And in the end, we bypass them completely; we never have a demon skirmish. We deal with mutant crocs, huge birds, a storm that I can only describe as a hurricane, ogres, giant spiders, and enough chauvinism to make you puke—but none of the all-important demons. I assume Ward didn’t want to reveal demons were people, not creatures—fine, but then don’t place so much emphasis on a foe we’ll never actually face. (“But we were actually with a demon the whole time!” But we didn’t know it and he was never an adversary. Doesn’t count.)
We didn’t spend nearly enough time exploring the lore of the Dark King or Sorrel’s mother, or the realm at large. We didn’t get enough context to comprehend the bigger picture. Why is the Southern Kingdom so closed off? Why does the Northern Kingdom have such an air of superiority? The Eastern and Western kingdoms are pretty much ignored. Why weren’t the kingdoms discussing the problem of the fulcrum? No one seemed inclined to investigate or do anything about it, until the very end, anyway.
So as we approach the end and belated lore gets dumped on us all at once, I had a hard time following, and things that should have been exciting and culminating instead felt anticlimactic and cartoonishly melodramatic. Throughout the story the Dark King felt like a distant possibility, an indistinct figure, not an imminent threat—then suddenly we’re facing off with him, and it felt so…unearned? If he’d invaded her dreams a couple times or they’d otherwise encountered each other, barely escaping, finally fighting him would have had more momentousness, but as it was, I just skimmed it without feeling much.
The twists were only meh, too; I won’t say I entirely predicted them but they didn’t surprise me all that much, either. Actually, they confused me more than anything. Merc being already dead and knowing who she was explained most of his weird behavior (I had to cross out a lot of notes, lol), but Sorrel being dead didn’t make any sense to me. Why—how—is she dead? It said she was immortal. Generally in stories immortals either don’t die or “die” by utterly ceasing to exist. Neither is the case for her, apparently. She’s marked like one of her father’s slaves—so she’s a demon? How? What does that even mean for her? In contrast, I get that Merc was “undead,” but Sorrel was never mortal to begin with. Furthermore, if they were dead, why were they completely animate? Why were their bodies warm, for instance, why did they feel things like hunger, exhaustion, illness? How did they bleed? The only living experience Sorrel didn’t have was her period. Well, that and the death visions.
Then the whole thing about her appearance—it said the color of her eyes, skin, and hair was a mask to hide her resemblance to her father, or at least hide what she truly looked like. I’m sorry, do you understand what a mask is? They’re meant to help you blend in, to make you unremarkable. To conceal you. Giving her such unusual coloring that she felt the need to completely cover herself means you did not understand the assignment. If you have to mask her mask, she wasn’t masked to begin with! So stupid.
Circling back to the poor development of their characters and relationship—I didn’t particularly like either of the leads. Sorrel was sympathetic but also annoying and not all that endearing. She wasn’t funny or particularly clever, except perhaps with the skystalker. She mostly just worried a lot about everything, which was exhausting to read.
And she was a total Mary Sue. Overpowered, too. Can’t swim? Gets in the water and swims like a fish. Can’t ride a horse? Gets in the saddle and feels she’s come home. Infected wound she fails to treat immediately? Heals without so much as a fever. Or scar, come to think of it. (“Because she’s dead!” Okay, but then why did it bleed and become painful and inflamed at all? How did herbs have an effect?) Wants to save people? Successfully does so without consequence. Thinks she’s a virgin? Totally blase about a callous first time against a wall. (“Because it wasn’t actually her first time!” But she thought it was!) Needs to open an unopenable gate? Immediately knows how to do it and accomplishes it on the first try. Lost? Has a magic compass. Gets taken prisoner? Her captors neglect to disarm her and are generally incompetent. Jumps off the Statue of Liberty? That random dragon she saved a week ago, who served no other purpose, just happens to be there to catch her. Unexpectedly faces a supremely powerful evil god who’s been rallying his power for the same amount of time she’s been ignorant of her own? Defeats him in a matter of minutes. Thank goodness she’d been nice to people or she might have actually struggled.
I could have liked Merc if he’d been a little more mature and less obsessed with having sex with her. Actually, knowing he knew who she was from the start, I’m surprised he thought he had any right to touch her at all, her being a god (not to mention his boss’s daughter) and him a lowly once-mortal demon. Nevertheless, he grew on me until we overstayed our welcome at the Outpost; him trying to sleep with a sex worker and agreeing to commit murder for Sorrel tarnished what little integrity he had. Both decisions seemed so petty and resentful, like he was a petulant child acting out, that any shits I halfway gave about him disappeared. He did too much to deliberately hurt her. I don’t mind an overbearing, emotionally constipated alpha male as long as he isn’t toxic and abusive; Merc was.
So no, I didn’t buy that they fell in love—they barely knew each other and didn’t show much respect for one another. She kept just as many secrets as he did, doesn’t matter that he already knew them. Sure, they shared some trauma on their journey, but they never talked about anything meaningful. (To be fair, she tried and he deflected, as cliche dictates.) So toward the end when they were all heartbroken and crying—eye roll.
Other notes in no particular order:
• Their travel time made no sense! The world has to be tiny—they could go from one end to the other in a day! And so much would happen in the span of one day, too. Neither consistent nor remotely realistic.
• The origins and purpose of the crystal gate wasn’t clear to me. Also, if shards of it make such valuable weapons, why was no one collecting the chips and later the pieces? Also, shattered by singing a high note? *pinches bridge of nose*
• The origins and purpose of the ruby wasn’t clear to me. The citizens were celebrating—why? What did it signify? What did it change? The queen was no more inclined to do anything than before.
• What was with the “contaminated” land? What did that mean?
(These last three notes somehow relate to the lore of the Dark King and Sorrel’s mother, but the connection isn’t clearly explained. Why weren’t there at least vague legends about any of it?)
• WTF with the pebble? Just—what? He was like a cat with a laser pointer. We’re supposed to fear this silly goose?
• No one noticed the commotion in the moat? Really?
• If all the columns of the structure under the Statue of Liberty were collapsed, how was it being held up at all? How had it not completely collapsed?
• I had zero understanding of what the Sooths were. I thought it was something like an orphanage or boarding school run by nuns or something—but then it was a temple where you can meet with some obscure omniscient entity in a confessional. What?
• Kept saying her stomach was in the “cradle of her pelvis”—One, that’s a bizarre way to describe nerves; two, it’s anatomically incorrect.
• I giggled when she was looking at the mural and it went from a bright and triumphant panel with happy people to a dark and unpopulated one. Sorrel was like, Oh no! Tragedy struck! And I’m just like, Maybe they went to bed, lol.
• It was glaringly inconsistent for someone who was so hyperaware of what unprotected sex leads to, having so often witnessed the heartbreaking consequences, that Sorrel didn’t spare a single thought to the consequences of having sex herself. Sure, she wanted the experience, but I thought for sure she’d employ some herbal method of contraception when the time came. But nope. “It’s foreshadowing that they’re dead”—but she didn’t know that, so she should have acted like pregnancy was a very complicating possibility.
• What was with the gold and red sparks when she had her first sexual encounter and the first time she killed someone? Her theory was it only happened the first time—except we learn neither of those times were likely firsts, so why were the sparks a thing at all?
• Soooo does Sorrel go save Julion’s betrothed or not?
• I read a digital ARC, and grammatical errors are to be expected since it’s not a final edited copy. But OH MY GOD there were hundreds of typos in my copy. Words left out, extra words, incorrect punctuation, spelling errors—why did only ten percent of questions have question marks? It was so distracting, I spent an obnoxious amount of time riddling out sentences and determining tone and wondering what were stylistic choices and what was just careless drafting. ARCs aren’t polished, fine, but at one point I was convinced the ARC had been written by AI.
In conclusion—not a fan. An unoriginal premise poorly executed. I have zero interest in reading more J.R. Ward.
*reads blurb* “Chosen mates”? No they weren’t. Prophesied travel companions, but I don’t remember mention of their love being preordained.
