This post may contain affiliate links for books we recommend. Read the full disclosure here.
Book: “The Curse of Sins” by Kate Dramis
Publishing Info: Sourcebooks Casablanca, June 2024
Where Did I Get this Book: ARC from the publisher!
Where Can You Get this Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | IndieBound
Book Description: After discovering she’s prophesied to save the realm, Aya’s duty should be clear: return home with once-sworn enemy Will to serve their queen in the coming war against a rival kingdom…one whose pursuit of dark magic could bring the realm to its knees.
But with part of the prophecy still undiscovered, and their queen’s intentions increasingly suspect, Aya’s very purpose is quickly brought into question. With betrayal lurking around every corner, she and Will are forced to lie, manipulate, and hide what they’ve become to one another as they struggle to learn the truth before dark magic destroys them all.
And with secrets and lies trailing Aya wherever she goes, she has to wonder…do the gods truly want her to save the realm…or simply watch it burn?
Previously Review: “The Curse of Saints”
Review: So, if you go back and read my review of the first book, you’ll see that I gave it a fairly middling review. That said, I distinctly remember filing this one in the “circle back around to” category in my head. Yes, I struggled with aspects of the first book, but I also remembered enjoying the world-building and the bare bones of the characters. I also had high hopes that now that the initial work had been done to introduce these characters and this world, the second installment would be freed up to tell a more complete and satisfying story. So, I requested this sequel. Alas, in this particular case, all of this strategizing was for not, and I ended up just as (in fact, even more!) frustrated with this second outing than I was with the first.
We always try to start with positives with our reviews, even the more negative ones. But I’ve got to say, it’s a bit of a struggle with this one. Essentially, every single thing that bothered me about the first book was present again here, except somehow, now even worse. That being the case, I guess a positive would be that if you enjoyed the first one, you’ll probably like this one! They are very similar, and if you enjoyed the angstiness of the characters, the long page length, and the arbitrary feel to whether or not certain story elements were crucial to the plot, well…you’ll like this one too! Also, if you like the “misunderstanding” trope in romances, than you’ll enjoy this love story a heck of a lot more than I did. I’ll also add that I don’t think the author’s writing style is bad. She can string together some very nice turns of phrase, and, again, I do think there are a lot of interesting ideas and world-building that went into this series. That said, things are never really pulled together in a coherent manner.
One of the things that annoyed me the most in the first book was the flip/flop relationship between Aya and Will, with them trusting one another one moment, then, bizarrely, swinging the complete other direction and keeping massive secrets from one another (at best!) or trying to kill one another again (at worst!). I was hopeful going into this book that we would leave this element behind. After all, there were some large reveals at the end of the first book, and the characters had, seemingly, grown over the course of that book. So, imagine my dismay when I cracked this one open and found even more of the same! C’mon now! At points it was so bad that it felt like the author was having to manually get into the story and rewind her own characters’ growth and arcs in completely unnatural ways just to increase the “drama” and brooding of it all. When I see this in a book, I begin to question whether the author really has a steady hand on the characters at all. Is there an inability to write them in any other way? Do they have no other inner lives to speak of? I can’t emphasize enough how frustrating it was to see the character work unspun like this, all for the sake of angst, seemingly.
I also continued to be thrown out by the incompetence of these characters. As I noted in my first review, there is a direct conflict between the types of people we are told Aya and Will are and the ones we see on the page. They aren’t just average spies and fighters; no, they are each at the very top, the Queen’s closest advisors, essentially helping her run the entire country. And, like the first book, I saw none of this skill on the page. Again and again, these characters would blunder through scenarios that should have been well within their skillsets. Worse, they failed to pick up on very obvious plots swirling around them in a way that was, frankly, laughable at times.
The book was also way too long for the amount of plot it contained. Again, there were elements of this plot line that I enjoyed, but there were also numerous instances where things seemed to happen for no real reason. And then were forgotten, with a similar lack of concern to cohesion. This book could have been severely edited down, and I think it would have helped every aspect of the story. A shorter page count would have tightened up the plot and, importantly, limited the page time devoted to the characters brooding.
I think this is it for me and this series. I’m glad I gave it another go, as there have been several instances where I’ve come back to a series or an author and been pleasantly surprised. Unfortunately, the author doubled down on everything that frustrated me about the first book here in the second, killing any interest I might have had in the third. However, if you did enjoy the first one, you’ll likely enjoy this one more than me!
Rating 5: Overly long and lacking in substance, this book didn’t seem to know what to do with its characters other than regress them into brooding messes.
Reader’s Advisory:
“The Curse of Sins” isn’t on any Goodreads lists yet, but it should be on SFF Spy Books.
The Library Ladies 