Heart of Thorns (Heart of Thorns, #1)

by Bree Barton

[Briana @ Pages Unbound]

Heart of Thorns is an interesting book that will likely appeal to many fans of high fantasy, and I admit there are elements I liked, from the not-clear-cut romance to the secrets of how the magic in the world works to some of the surprise plot twists.  On the other hand, Heart of Thorns is a novel that ended up being not right for me, for reasons I predicted from the beginning.

The book is being marketed as a heavily feminist work, and while I personally am a feminist, I am not a fan of being hit over the head with messages (regardless of what they are or how much I agree with them).  This book really hammers down the feminism.  Like, really.  There are monologues about how women are oppressed, and the explanation for magic is that women were so impressed that they developed magic to defend themselves. I wouldn't have minded more subtlety, so I could feel more as if I were reading a novel and less as if I were reading a tract on the evils of the patriarchy.

My other issue is that, while I enjoyed aspects of the writing, I could never really "connect" with the book because I just don't agree with most of the worldview it espouses or many of what are clearly supposed to be deep life lessons.  Primarily, the book stresses following your emotions above all else, and I get it in the context of what the book is trying to do and say, but I  don't agree with the concept of prioritizing your emotions over logic or self-control.  I also wasn't totally on board with some of the things the book was trying to say about love or other big life questions.  In short, the book doesn't "speak to me."

And, honestly, that's such a huge problem that, in terms of my personal opinions, I don't think there's much else to say about the book: it's heavy-handed, and I think it gets a lot of important philosophical questions and moral questions wrong. However, other readers might connect with these things, so I'll take a moment to review some other aspects of the book:

I think it starts out a bit stilted, particularly in the dialogue, and it suffers from the problem I see in a lot of YA royal fantasy books where the characters sound as if they're performing speaking to each other rather than actually having a conversation.  Luckily, this eventually goes away.  I'd say linguistics are never a strong point of the novel, as (for example), a place called Refuj is suppose to be a "clever" play on "refuge," but the plot compensates for some of the awkwardness.

So if you're a person who really loves plot, I think this book can work for you.  The story goes from court to wilderness to secret places to magic places, etc.  The characters shift and grow in their relationships to each other, and the end is a complete surprise (or, it was to me).  I hesitate to outright recommend it because I didn't love, but I also think it could be worth a try if the premise sounds like something you'd like.