This book had so much potential, but I never felt connected to these characters, especially Juliette and Roma. Lots of showing, not telling without really building the suspense of what happened to them before (is it because of how young they were? Probably). Some of the same issues I had with The Gilded Wolves, where new characters and developments don’t feel appropriately signposted. (The?) Larkspur just seemed to appear out of nowhere at around the 45% mark (unless I missed something, which is possible). The Secretary-General also never felt dropped into the story and completely flat (and the plural of the position is Secretaries-General, just to get it off my chest).
Juliette is another character (like Celaena in Throne of Glass) who is constantly described as being capable and violent, and yet we rarely seem to see it (the ending, discussed a bit below, changes this somewhat, but not enough). She oscillates between perfect socialite and ruthless heir, but rarely when it seems appropriate. We hear about her partying in America, but never see this behavior return except for drinking an entire bottle of gin? She feels little Mary Sue-ish to me – good at everything, but still not feeling ‘good enough’. Roma also has inconsistent characterization, to the point that Juliette literally references this within the book.
As has happened with a number of recent reads, I felt no emotional attachments to the side characters that our MCs are supposed care about (Mr. Li, Alisa). I did actually care about Benedikt and Marshall, but they still seemed flat and there wasn’t enough of them. Tyler’s name pulled me out of the story every time – to the point that I looked it up on Behind the Name and found no evidence that it was used/popular in the 1920s. Yes, yes, I am petty.
Despite some very poetic writing, the city never came to life as in books like The Green Bone Saga or Six of Crows. The payoff/ending was surprisingly solid after a shakey and sloooooooow promise and progress (see this post for more on promises, progress, and payoff), but that wasn’t enough to redeem the book and its uneven and inconsistent characters. This ended up being another rage read, because I wanted it to be so much better. Two cups of tea.
