Divine Rivals by Rebecca RossMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Normally I'm leery as hell when it comes to BookTok hype - Fourth Wing, anyone? - but this book lives up to the level of attention it's been getting these last few months. A little less spicy than most romantasy offerings, enough that Fort Vancouver Regional Library shelves it pretty confidently as YA instead of adult (or even NA, which is where I'd really categorize it myself), but it's definitely a hell of a lot more inky and smoky, befitting its setting in a steampunk-like world where our main characters work in an old-timey newsroom and wind up covering the distant wars fought between human proxies for a couple of feuding gods. This book is billed as Shadow & Bone meets Lore, but I'd consider it much less Lore and much more Howl's Moving Castle, with a dash of Legend of Korra as well due to the feuding gods being oddly reminiscent of Raava and Vaatu. And while the enemies-to-lovers trope (so common these days, as we all know) makes Iris and Roman have a certain Reylo-like feel to them at times, their story progression feels a lot more grounded and realistic - and again, less spicy, though even Ross does highlight a certain chapter in her dedication, and for good reason. Now to wait on the long waitlist again to finally get around to the sequel...
View all my reviews
No comments:
Post a Comment