The Beholder (Beholder, #1)

by Anna Bright

[ladygrey]

This is a pleasant, entertaining book.

It’s barely a story, honestly. But sometimes a little bit of mild pleasantness enough.

It isn’t much of a story because even half way through NOTHING’S HAPPENING. There’s scenes and time progresses but really there’s no story yet.

You’d think I’d appreciate it because there’s very little conflict, but there’s also no intrigue or excitement or passion or mystery. The queen is poisoning her father (not shocking at the end, by the way. not at all) and threatening her friend (which takes Selah forever to even suspect) and Selah’s supposed to be coming up with a plan to deal with these suitors but she’s doing nothing. She has no agency. No one has any agency or is making any choices. It’s just this placid stream of mild events.

And overwrought emotions. She’s so terrified of this kingdom and so insistent she won’t go, but for no reason at all. Politically bland conquering but no fighting, no threats, no war or past betrayal or any reason to be so scared of a place except a children’s nursery rhythm.

It is not conflict or a threat or anything scary—you have given me no evidence to believe you and so I am not invested or threatened.

Also all Selah’s emotions seem overdone and irrational, more like a ten year old than an eighteen year old. And the scenes are so short it’s like you never dive into the story at all until halfway through Norge. It’s just a quick blip of someone does something Selah doesn’t like, she overreacts in her head but doesn’t say or do anything and end scene.

And the subterfuge with Bear is totally obvious like from the beginning.

In the beginning her godmother told her she’s a clever girl. But she’s not. She’s oblivious to what’s happening in her own court. She had no idea what’s going on in England. She’s not even trying to come up with a plan to deal with these suitors. She had no idea what’s going on with Lang. Like how cool would it be if she actually paid attention and started asking questions in England. If she sent her people out to find out stuff as spies and uncovered the game before the reveal. That would be a clever girl.

So there’s more than one lie in this book. But it’s a pleasant book and i do like pleasant things.

Also Aleksei is up to more than we’ve seen thus far.

But I like Torden and there’s almost a story in Norge. He’s one of the few characters with agency because he chose her and he chose to go with her (at least for a minute) and I liked him. I also like Bear.

Though in general I’m not sure what I think of the characters. On the one hand she’s knowingly using existing characters. And yet it’s so obviously Thor and Loki and others—andI think is that it feels too close to the modern incarnations of them and not just the myths. So it feels a little derivative.

There’s potential here but not much of an actual story.