Lady Elanna Valtai is devoted to the King who raised her like a daughter. But when he dies under mysterious circumstances, Elanna is accused of his murder and must flee for her life. Returning to her homeland, Elanna is forced to reckon with her despised, estranged father. Feeling a strange, deep connection to the natural world, she also must face the truth about the forces she has always denied or disdained as superstition powers that suddenly stir within her. But an all-too-human threat is drawing near, determined to exact vengeance. Now Elanna has no choice but to lead a rebellion against the kingdom to which she once gave her allegiance. Trapped between divided loyalties, she must summon the courage to confront a destiny that could tear her apart. The Waking Land is upon us.
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The Waking Land
Callie Bates
As a fantasy lover, there are two things I look for in a good book, and I was pleasantly surprised to see both early on in The Waking Land. The first is that it has good world building. The second is that there’s a lot of rich history involved. The kingdoms both have a vast background that is delved in and out of during the book as we learn multiple sides of history! Plus we get some much depth from our characters about the lands they travel through.
The middle of the book seemed to slow dramatically due to a lot of political issues involved with the storyline. (because of the history of the two kingdoms!) This felt a bit draining at first, but once you get lost into all the different threads of intrigue its starts picking up again. I’d say the politics got a bit too much because it’s a much smaller book than other epic fantasies (AKA A Song of Ice and Fire). This meant that it was a bigger percentage of the book, but of a similar complexity to a larger book. Although, I personally enjoyed this despite the slower pace!
There’s so many strong female characters in the book despite the patriarchal world it’s set in. Even our secondary characters, like Rhia, Sophy and, Victoire are great characters to see develop and grow in confidence as the book progresses. As a whole, the characters are written extremely well, and all have their own personalities and preferences as well. Only character flaws I could think of would be that some characters have multiple names which was confusing at times.
Overall, I loved the book even though at times it wasn’t as gripping as it could have been. I did think that Bates was a wonderful writer, although at times felt that it could be more suited for adult books as this was a lot more of an epic fantasy than a YA. Despite it’s flaws, I could say that this was one of my most interesting reads for the year. I’m super excited to read the second book which I got at YALC though!
Positives
+ World building and history
+ Strong female characters
Negatives
– Slow middle of book
– Multiple character names
I received The Waking Land by Callie Bates from the publisher via Bookbridgr. This is an unbiased and honest review