Mundie Moms

Tuesday, March 20, 2018

LOST CROW CONSPIRACY By Rosalyn Eves / Book Review #LostCrowConspiracy



ABOUT THE BOOK

By: Rosalyn Eves 
Published by: Knopf Books for Young Readers 
To Be Released on: March 27th, 2018
Series: Blood Rose Rebellion #2
Purchase from: The Publisher | Amazon | B&N
Add it to Goodreads

An arc of this book was provided by the publisher in exchange for my honest review

Sixteen-year old Anna Arden was once just the magically barren girl from an elite Luminate family. Now she has broken the Binding—and Praetheria, the creatures held captive by the spell, wreak havoc across Europe. Lower-class citizens have access to magic for the first time, while other Luminates lose theirs forever. Austria and Hungary are at odds once more.
Anna Arden did not know breaking the Binding would break the world.


Anna thought the Praetheria were on her side, content and grateful to be free from the Binding. She thought her cousin Matyas’s blood sacrifice to the disarm the spell would bring peace, equality, justice. She thought her future looked like a society that would let her love a Romani boy, Gabor.


But with the Monarchy breathing down her neck and the Praetheria intimidating her at every turn, it seems the conspiracies have only just begun.


As threat of war sweeps the region, Anna quickly discovers she can’t solve everything on her own. Now there’s only one other person who might be able to save the country before war breaks out. The one person Anna was sure she’d never see again. A bandit. A fellow outlaw. A man known as the King of Crows. Matyas.


MY REVIEW

Picking up not long after Rose Blood Rebellion ends, Eves wastes little time getting readers right back into thick of things. Things are far from how Anna envisioned them. There's a lot that heavily weighs on her. Breaking the Binding seemed so easy, compared to all she endures in this book. 

Anna's character journey is an interesting one. Not only is she still grieving the loss of someone close to her, she's now dealing with set backs from breaking the binding. On top of that, she also realizes that she is a girl in a man's world. This gives her the strength to let her voice be heard. Not only for herself, but for those who don't have a voice. I loved that she's not someone to be underestimated. This girl fights to overcome oppression, and make her voice heard. I was impressed with her fierceness, and her unwavering strength. Truth be told, she does have her weaknesses, and some of those do come back to haunt her, as they should. I really liked her boldness, her refusal to be silenced, and her stance in her beliefs, even if she's mocked for it, and is threatened for it. 

I really enjoyed the twists in this storyline with the characters. I was not excepting some of those surprising turn of events. I was pleasantly surprised that this story is told not only from Anna's point of view, but another character's point of view as well. I'm not going to spoil it for you, but it was a shocker at first. In the beginning I wasn't feeling their revised role in the story. However, as their story unfolds along side Anna's, it makes more sense as to 'why'. Just as the 'why' is revealed the story ends, leaving me wishing I had the next book already! 

Slow story pacing aside, one of my favorite elements to this story is the way Eves took historical references, and infused them into her own fantasy world. It was intriguing and educational. She retold the Austrian-Hungarian War, and the repercussions that were caused by it, and mixed into her series's richly detailed lore, and character history. I loved these elements. We see more how the repercussions from breaking the binding, and the death it caused weighed heavily on Anna, and have caused a lot of problems since the end of Blood Rose Rebellion. Something Anna wasn't excepting. I liked that, because in war, and life in general, all choices have consequences, but in war it's more costly, and can be down right deadly. Something Anna has learned. 

Overall this was an intriguing storyline. I loved the historical elements, and getting a deeper look into the fantasy elements, and the mix of the two. I really enjoyed the character development. I should add characters, because the characters all had interesting storylines, and I was not excepting a lot of what happens, to happen. The pacing itself is slow in a lot areas, which made for me not loving the book as much as I wanted to. However, Eve's richly detailed storytelling definitely kept me hooked, and I can't wait to see what happens in the next book. 

On a side note, I already loved this cover, but love it so much more now after reading the book. Yes, there is a reason why a crow is on a the cover, and it's not just because of the title. Trust me, it's a good one! 

Favorite Quotes:

"You think because I am a girl, I am weak. Because I speak for those who are given no voice here, my voice should matter less. You are wrong, on both counts." - Anna 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR


Rosalyn Eves grew up in the Rocky Mountains, dividing her time between reading books and bossing her siblings into performing her dramatic scripts. As an adult, the telling and reading of stories is still one of her favorite things to do. When she’s not reading or writing, she enjoys spending time with her chemistry professor husband and three children, watching British period pieces, or hiking through the splendid landscape of southern Utah, where she lives. She dislikes housework on principle.
She has a PhD in English from Penn State, which means she also endeavors to inspire college students with a love for the English language. Sometimes it even works.

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OUT TODAY! 3/20/18 New YA Releases


Happy Book Birthday to today's new YA releases! There are some good reads out today. Here's what you can find on bookstore shelves today: 


Which new releases are you looking forward to reading?

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