Glass Sword by Victoria Aveyard

Glass Sword (Red Queen, #2)

by Victoria Aveyard

Perfect for fans of George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones series, Glass Sword is the high-stakes follow-up to the #1 New York Times bestselling Red Queen.

Mare Barrow's blood is red—the color of common folk—but her Silver ability, the power to control lightning, has turned her into a weapon that the royal court tries to control. The crown calls her an impossibility, a fake, but as she makes her escape from Maven, the prince—the friend—who betrayed her, Mare uncovers something startling: she is not the only one of her kind.

Pursued by Maven, now a vindictive king, Mare sets out to find and recruit other Red-and-Silver fighters to join in the struggle against her oppressors. But Mare finds herself on a deadly path, at risk of becoming exactly the kind of monster she is trying to defeat. Will she shatter under the weight of the lives that are the cost of rebellion? Or have treachery and betrayal hardened her forever?

Reviewed by Chelsea on

2 of 5 stars

Share
What I Loved

I can’t say there was a whole lot I loved about this book. I loved Cal and Shade but that was pretty much it for this one unfortunately.

What I Didn't Love

This could turn into a rant but I’m going to try really hard from letting that happen. I found there was a lot of things wrong with this book. I’m honestly surprised I picked it up after not liking the first one but I thin I was hoping it got better. I can easily tell you that this book suffers from second book syndrome pretty badly and was not better than the first one.

My biggest issue with this book was that it was unoriginal and very predictable. At least the ending of the first book surprised me. Did anyone see that coming? Maybe a few but not many. But this ending? Wow, we haven’t seen that before. (In case you couldn’t tell that last line was dripping with sarcasm.) We’ve seen that exact same thing happen again and again in YA books and especially in dystopia. I was so bored reading this that I’m actually surprised I finished it. Nothing happened, the plot was dry, and everything was predictable and it made me want to give up.

I found the characters to also be quite boring. Mare has no personality and only cares about saving “herr people”. She refuses to clue in that it’s not just her precious reds who need saving and her and Cal are often fighting about this. She’s under the impression that all silvers must be horrible when we all know that’s never the case. It drove me insane that she couldn’t get past her hatred of the silvers even though she’s no different from them. I hated that all she wanted to do was start another war when that’s what she was trying to prevent. Basically she contradicted herself ALL THE TIME and I couldn’t stand it.

A few other things I noticed:

The queen’s story was super anticlimatic. Something dramatic happens and nothing is done about it. Disappointing.
The plot was jumpy. The characters were always changing their minds and going from one thing to the next.
The only good thing about the first book was Maevan and we hardly got to see him in this one.
Besides that, the only other thing I can say is that I was disappointed that there was next to no romance. It was the one thing that could have hooked my into this story and it didn’t happen! Sure there were little hints here and there but no matter how much it was talked about, nothing happened.

Who I'd Recommend To

I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone. Unless they’ve been living under a rock for the past 5-6 years and have never read a YA book before in their life. You might like it then. For those of us who do read YA consistently I’d suggest skipping this one because it’s the exact same as at least half the YA dystopia books out there.

Last modified on

Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 21 July, 2016: Finished reading
  • 21 July, 2016: Reviewed