I am hugely disappointed by The Chaos of Stars, mainly because I'm a HUGE fan of Egyptian mythology. But the book really fell flat for me. Let me break it down for you:
- Isadora, human daughter of Egyptian gods, hates her family because she feels like they use her to generate worship so that they won't die.
- Isadora moves to San Diego.
- Isadora becomes addicted to sugar and Coke (Coca Cola.. not like... cocaine).
- Isadora works at a museum and makes some friends there.
- Isadora goes to American restaurants for the first time and enjoys the food.
- Isadora does some interior design.
- Isadora has bad dreams and ignores them.
- Isadora tries her very best to not crush on a guy because "Love is like cancer".
- Isadora works on a display for the museum.
- Isadora eats more American food.
- Isadora complains about how much her family sucks.
- Isadora has more bad dreams that she ignores.
- Last 5%: we finally get some conflict, which ends in 2 sentences. Then, the story ends.
What I'm trying to tell you is that nothing happens in The Chaos of Stars. For 95% of the book there is no conflict whatsoever. There's actually very little Egyptian mythology too. Other than the history lesson info dumps at the beginning of each chapter (which I'll explain later), the book reads like a contemporary book. It's just about a girl moving to America, meeting friends, hating her family, not wanting to fall in love, working at a museum, and starting an interior design project.
I will admit that I didn't hate The Chaos of Stars at the beginning. But small annoyances started to really wear me down over time, and I finally realized that the book was lacking an interesting conflict.. so, my enjoyment dropped significantly.
First, every single chapter starts off with a description of Isadora's dream that night and then a 2 paragraph "info dump" about some Egyptian mythology. I personally never like reading about dreams in books. They're boring and ultimately I just don't care. I didn't even need to read the dreams to understand the plot. I get that she's having nightmares and that they're trying to tell her something bad is happening.. I don't need to read 50 dreams to understand that. And then the history lessons just felt like filler bits to remind us that we were reading a mythology book and not a contemporary romance. I didn't feel like the bits of history actually contributed to the plot at all. There are a few relevant points, but ultimately, it didn't feel that important and the relevant ones could have been presented in a much better way.
Isadora was a painfully annoying main character. For starters, her favourite word is "Floods". She uses it instead of things like, "Oh my god" or "Holy crap" or maybe "Shit". She says "Floods" instead. I wasn't too irked by it at first, but after a while it really started to bug me. But more importantly, Isadora was just so bitter. She hated her family and thought they were using her, so that made her bitter about life, love, and relationships in general. Her outlook on life was, "What's the point of falling in love if we all die eventually?" She even went as far as to compare attraction to cancer:
"What is wrong with being attracted to someone? It's a natural thing."
"Yes, well, cancer is a natural thing, and we try our best to kill it.
"You're comparing love to cancer. I don't believe it."
—The Chaos of Stars by Kiersten White
Finally, I just got so sick of her bitterness and "nobody cares about me" attitude.
I'm replaceable. Utterly, completely replaceable.
—The Chaos of Stars by Kiersten White
And then there's the whole thing with the dreams. At the beginning, Isadora's mother told her to watch out for bad dreams because she thought something bad was going to happen. So, naturally, Isadora has bad dreams, then DOESN'T tell her mother about them because she's mad at her mother. Of course, let's ignore a god, who obviously knows what she's talking about. And obviously those dreams do lead to something bad happening.
Overall I felt like every part of the book was predictable. I knew something was going to happen with the dreams and I knew that Ry was some kind of "human child of a god" as well. The Chaos of Stars sorely lacked any kind of excitement or likable main character. There was no conflict for the bulk of the story (other than Isadora's "poor me, my family hates me" monologues) and when there finally was a conflict, it was squashed in two sentences:
Anubis and Set's wife plot to kill Isadora's mother, using the same snake she used to almost kill Amun-Re. Isadora is RACING across the world back to Egypt to stop him, terrified of her mother's possible death. She gets there, Set's wife releases the snake, and then this happens:
My father slams his staff onto the snake's tail. It freezes, drying into dust before my eyes, and then it's gone.
I guess all that crying and rushing to Egypt to "save her mom" wasn't that necessary.
I'm sad to say that this will be my last Kiersten White book. I've tried two of her books now and it's time to accept that we just don't click.