WardenRed reviewed Empire of Light by Alex Harrow (Voyance, #1)
None
3 stars
Well, I always wanted to go out with ‘Fuck you,’ but whatever.
What I knew about this book going it made it sound like the perfect read for me. I mean, enemies to lovers? A love triangle with a poly solution? A demisexual MC? Screwed-up found families? Sci-fi adventure with magical/psychic powers? Give me all of it! Needless to say, I was super excited to read this.
Unfortunately, reality didn't exactly live up to my expectations. I wouldn't call this book bad; maybe it's just not for me, despite being built out of the tropes I usually love. But it just failed to keep my attention and I often struggled to figure out what was even going on. The way the worldbuilding was presented often made me feel like I was reading book 2 in a series and desperately lacked the knowledge of what happened in book 1. To be …
Well, I always wanted to go out with ‘Fuck you,’ but whatever.
What I knew about this book going it made it sound like the perfect read for me. I mean, enemies to lovers? A love triangle with a poly solution? A demisexual MC? Screwed-up found families? Sci-fi adventure with magical/psychic powers? Give me all of it! Needless to say, I was super excited to read this.
Unfortunately, reality didn't exactly live up to my expectations. I wouldn't call this book bad; maybe it's just not for me, despite being built out of the tropes I usually love. But it just failed to keep my attention and I often struggled to figure out what was even going on. The way the worldbuilding was presented often made me feel like I was reading book 2 in a series and desperately lacked the knowledge of what happened in book 1. To be honest, many aspects of the plot made me feel the same. It didn't help that transitions between scenes often felt choppy and a lot of the side characters felt same-ish (with the exception of Jay who was hands-down my favorite character). As for the romance part, I never got invested into any part of it either. I just... didn't feel like any of these people were good for each other in the long run. Also, about 1/3 in I started feeling like there's just too much violence for violence's sake and trauma for trauma's sake, and that feeling only kept intensifying as I read on.
Honestly, I hate giving this book a low rating. It's wonderfully, wonderfully diverse. Everything I know about the author makes me feel they're a really cool person. The premise of the story is fantastic. There are a lot of exciting moments. I'm still in love with the idea of this story. It's just that the execution really wasn't for me.
