The Traitor's Game: Volume 1 (Traitor's Game, #1)

by Jennifer A. Nielsen

Kestra tries to foil her kidnappers' plot, by force, cunning, or any means necessary. As motives shift and secrets emerge, both will have to decide what--and who--it is they're fighting for.

• ISBN10: 133822736X
• ISBN13: 9781338227369
• Publish Date: 27 February 2018
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Scholastic US
• Edition: CD ed.
• Format: Audiobook (CD)
• Duration: 11 hours and 1 minutes
• Language: English

Reviews

[Kelly]

Kestra Dallisor has been summoned home by her father, a garrison of soldiers ensuring her compliance. Upon her journey, Kestra is captured by the Corack, a rebellion alliance and escorted to her father's palatial residence in Highwyn as handmaiden and footsoldier. The Corack alliance are pursuing the Olden Blade, an artefact to subjugate the immortal Lord Endrick and his oppressive reign.

Sixteen year old Kestra Dallisor is a formidable and coarsened young woman, ostracised by her father to the desolate Lava Fields. Henry Dallisor is a malevolent and treacherous persecutor, second in command and enforcer representing the immortal Lord Endrick. Kestra is summoned to Highwyn to be exploited as a commodity for political advantage, her betrothal will ensure the compliance of neighbouring regions under the reign of Lord Endrick, her father unconcerned of the freedom for his daughter. During her journey, Kestra is held captive by the rebellion, a group of unrelenting recruits tenacious in their pursuit for sovereignty, her handmaiden and footsoldier held as assurance for her cooperation and allegiance.

Captain Grey Tenger, leader of the Coracks has assigned Simon Hatch to accompany the Princess, his objective to retain the Olden Blade. Simon is acquainted with the Dallisor lineage, as a young boy within the palace compound until accused and sentenced for theft.

Often in young adult literature, characters placed within precarious positions find solace within one another, consumed by the intensity of the narrative. Kestra and Simon are coincidental companions, physically attracted to one another. Their tentative companionship is disingenuous and mistrustful. Simon wasn't anticipating a young woman, tenacious and spirited to challenge his patriotism to the Corack revolution, creating a precarious alliance.

The Olden Blade is believed to be buried beneath the dungeons of the Dallisor Highwyn residence, infused with Endrean alchemy by Lord Endrick. The mythology maintains that the blade was wielded during the War of Devastation by a young woman before her capture and sentence. Only those of Halderian lineage can wield the blade and the denouement of the Endrick reign. To ensure the survival of her Footman and Handmaiden, Kestra is coerced to find the blade, endangering the lives of the Corack if captured. She's placed in an inconceivable, treasonous position.

I'm optimistic that the next installment will traverse the greater Antora kingdom and the politics between regions under Lord Endrick. The Traitor's game only touches upon the impoverished conditions beyond Highwyn. Is the desolate landscape and socioeconomic collapse consequences of conflict?

While the overall young adult fantasy narrative was marginally repetitive and conventional, I really enjoyed the characterisation and the mythology infused narrative. Highly recommended for reluctant fantasy readers.

[sa090]

You know, if the writing wasn’t so easy to read, I would’ve dropped this book after the 25% mark for sure.

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I like to give a brief preview of what my overall mood is going to be in the beginning of all of my thoughts, and this time is no different. My main reason for saying that it would’ve probably been dropped is because this book is a very unoriginal book, without much that actually gives it an edge or rather makes it worth reading than let’s say, Flame in the Mist by Renee Ahdieh from last year which had a lot of similar elements to this book, but the difference in the before mentioned was the intriguing culture that still made it interesting to finish. This book unfortunately doesn’t have that, it’s a very very basic fantasy series set in a very basic world. I really wished that the plot would be more compelling to pick up the slack, but it also was very generic.

This made me turn to the characters. I’m the type of reader who believes that you need compelling characters to make me really care about your story and this book once again has none of that. Kestra for example is one of the most passively aggressive heroines I’ve ever followed in a story, what’s more is that it’s treated as if it’s her form of sass and clever wit which I just fail to see in any sort of way. There is a big difference between blatant insults and sass, and Kestra never stops with the former despite having a couple of moments of the latter. Her personality just makes her an exhausting heroine to follow because I end up wanting to see her fail, even worse? She’s not the only one with this personality which makes it extra exhausting.

Simon on the other hand is one of the most pathetic characters I’ve ever followed in a book, his only reason for being in this story is to be the love interest. The position he supposedly plays in the story is just a pretense, since he never actually does anything that shows me his worth. That’s not the worst part though, the eventual romance of this book is hands down the absolute worst romance development I’ve ever read in 2018 so far and probably 2017 as well. It’s baseless, it shouldn’t have happened based on the history, it’s unrealistically developed, neither party are actually good for each other and it’s just downright cringeworthy. This is going to be a series apparently, so why do this have to happen in the first third of the book? No one thought there is something wrong with this? It’s just strange and definitely not in an interesting way.

So what about the world? The same reason that hooked me to Ace of Shades? Yep, nothing that interesting either. To be fair, she does have different forces and such with magic and new things but it’s never explored enough to actually feel like it matters all that much in the bigger scheme of things. So far anyway, which is a damn shame because fantasy allows you to be extra creative and not taking that chance is just a waste of an opportunity when the book has more than enough focus on teenage love drama with petty jealousies. There are actually a few chances to expand on some things and even change the very generic formula this book went by, but again the opportunities were wasted for some reason that I won’t be sticking around to know about.

Honestly, the only redeeming quality I can think of here would be the writing; since she manages to make the story engaging despite the fact that it’s just a mess of checked tropes. The story flaws very smoothly, the way she writes makes it very easy to read quickly which might be because of her past as a middle grade author and if only the rest of the elements worked well, I think that this might’ve actually been an interesting read despite the unoriginality of it instead of just a generic fantasy with a horrible romantic angle.

Final rate: 2/5