Review: Blade Breaker

Blade Breaker by Victoria Aveyard
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I guess I loved this book enough to want to order two copies? Well, not intentionally, but when I got this book, not only was it sent to my old address by mistake, but I'd somehow managed to place orders for both a signed and an un-signed copy. The un-signed copy, I've sent to an old friend from my Wattpad days. The other, I read and savored over the course of several days - and while I could only read a few chapters at a time due to the generally busy nature of my schedule, those chapters that I could read, they read super hella fast. 

If I had any complaints about the first book in Aveyard's new and ambitious series, it was that the book was surprisingly slow and packed with too many POVs to count, and overall felt like a serious case of Prolonged Prologue. This time, though, Aveyard makes up for all those issues but good, keeping the story moving at a much brisker pace and concentrating her efforts primarily on three POVs out of the six that populated the pages of Realm Breaker. Though there are still six different POV characters, Aveyard gives much more emphasis to a certain core three - Corayne, Sorasa, and Erida. Dom and Andry get a smattering of one or two POV chapters each, as does Ridha, whose name made me think of a certain famous Big Brother US contestant when it appeared on the page next to the name Kesar (which I initially misread as Kaysar, and given Aveyard's well-documented love of Real Housewives and her oh-so-LA personality, I wouldn't be surprised if she made that an intentional shout-out.) Though I'm a bit salty that Dom gets far fewer POV chapters than I'd like - I still don't quite understand why Sorasa is fan fave enough to merit all the spotlight she gets, though I do like her better in this book than in the first; and I'm still convinced that Dom would've made far more sense as the protagonist than Corayne, but Taristan as her Corblood foil helps that status make its own sense. 

Overall, this book flies all over its sprawling, diverse world map with so much action and magic - and dragons, because why the hell not? Also, the undead, rising up out of the Burning Realm of Infyria because of all the mayhem Erida and Taristan are pulling with the Spindles. It all builds up to a huge climactic battle that I'm sure Aveyard was going for Return of the King vibes one book early (then again, Glass Sword was Mockingjay one book early, followed by some of the best fantasy politicking I've ever seen in King's Cage), but for me comes off a lot more reminiscent of Rhythm of War. I mean, the Spindles are already so much like the Shards that Sanderson employs to such great effect... 

The ending, Aveyard has been posting reactions to it on Insta for a while, and while it wasn't nearly as maddening for me as the original Aveyardian Cliffhanger of Glass Sword, it was still pretty gnarly, and I'm really dying to see where she finishes things off next year. Assuming, though, that this series doesn't get extended with one more book like Red Queen did...

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