A Vault of Sins

by Sarah Harian

[celinenyx]

2.5 Stars

A Vault of Sins is the second part in a series by Sarah Harian, following her debut The Wicked We Have Done. Where The Wicked We Have Done was a fast-paced Hunger Games style of dystopian, A Vault of Sins focusses on more world building and plot twists.

After the happenings of the first book, our main characters are prosecuted, hated, and traumatised. They are incredibly broken. Evalynn tries to hide her sorrows in drinking massive amounts of alcohol, pushing everyone around her away, and painting from dusk till dawn. She has screwdrivers for breakfast, lunch, and sometimes dinner as well. Although I appreciated that the characters felt some actual effects of what happened before, the speed of the story was incredibly slow in the beginning. They basically sit around, talk a bit with lawyers, an wallow. It took me two weeks to get through the first half of the book. The second half I read in one evening.

With the premise of finding out more about the world and the conspiracies, I was a bit disappointed with everything we learn in A Vault of Sins. Expecting Feed, I got Catching Fire. It was still a good read, but I wanted to know more. The conspiracy is still rather flimsy, with not enough clues for the reader to pick up on. A Vault of Stars is a good book for readers of character driven books, rather than plot-driven.

At just 250 pages, this book is incredibly short for the genre. Many 350 page books have exactly the same amount of plot as Vault does. This difference stems from the lack of padding. The writing is incredibly direct, to the point, and almost staccato. I've noticed that a lot of readers have appreciated this form of writing, but it felt too empty for me. There were not enough words to let me linger on a scene, to truly paint a picture. We're left frantically scrambling through conversations and short scenes, turning them to a meaningless blur. I just simply need more words to fully appreciate a scene.

The few glimpses we got of things to come did make me curious. I hope the third Chaos Theory book will have a faster start, and maybe a bit more meat.