I was excited to read Oathbound. The cover is pretty. The premise is intriguing. And it's hard to find clean fantasy. I started reading the first few chapters, then put it down. …And didn't pick it up again for a few weeks. While the beginning tried to elicit intrigue, mystery and suspense it was ineffective because I didn't care about the characters. When I came back to the story I remembered that Emme had revealed she was dying and thought, “eh. I don't really care.”
I didn't care much about Arn, whether or not he was captain of his ship or if he paid back his debt.
I didn't care much whether Emric ever got a ship of his own to captain. Or if anything at all happened to Ontario or the rest of the crew. When half of them died on the island I didn't care. The characters were fairly flat and yet I kept reading. Because it wasn't so bad that I wanted to DNF it. I was mildly curious whether the characters would achieve any of their goals in as much as understanding how it would lead into the second book.
I did not like that Arn lost his hand. That seemed too dramatic a consequence and also not well told. I read “sliced cleanly through” as he gets a deep cut to his wrist, not it gets cut off. So when he's lamenting that he only has one hand I was confused. I finally accepted he's apparently lost a hand and it made me like the story less.
I was fairly certain I had no interest in the second book. Even after Emric “died” I knew Emric wasn't dead. The introduction of a mermaid girlfriend just before made that pretty obvious. I didn't see the reveal about his mother, but also didn't feel anything or really care much at all about that moment. I had been somewhat curious what was so terrible about the king because whatever it was, Arn didn't just desert the navy but kill all his shipmates (which seemed like a really drastic move). Ontario's reveal, though, was maybe the most interesting bit at the end. I didn't see that coming. It definitely made me like him less. In fact, it felt more like a betrayal than anything Landon did (I mean I didn't like Landon at all but nothing he did felt terrible).
So now I probably will read the second book eventually. In part because I know McCombs style is florid in its description and superficial with its characters, so I won't be disappointed. And in part because it will look pretty in an instagram post and it feels like cheating to post about a book I haven't read.