A Marvellous Light (Last Binding, #1)

by Freya Marske

[lessthelonely]

DNFed.

If you didn’t notice the picture, this is a different kind of book review, so I should preface this by explicitly saying that I didn’t finish this book, but I wouldn’t be posting this review if I didn’t think that what I read warranted me writing the review. I also had a lot riding on this book, and I’ve been reading it for a while, hoping I’d get a review out of it, but I just can’t finish it.

After reading a book that I really enjoyed but unfortunately took me a long time to read, now comes a book that takes me a long time to read and is a pain to get through. And since I’m going to make some very noticeably negative comments on the book, I want you to know this isn’t ill intended, because I wanted to like this very badly. But I have to be honest.

Let’s start with the premise: it’s good. It’s basically a murder mystery where the murder isn’t all that explored, because the main seller of this book is the fantasy and romantic aspects of it, thus that narrative hook is simply that: a narrative hook. I felt like this was mentioned four or five times in the amount I read, which either means stuff gets more juicy in the end and the romance takes center stage until then, or that it’s simply not that interesting to know the culprit and their motive.

Let’s talk about what I liked, now. The author managed to create a very simple yet very nuanced magic system: cradling (that’s what I’ll call it, since it is the term most used) is very similar to Nen from Hunter x Hunter. Bet you weren’t expecting me drawing a comparison to an anime. But if you know that show, Nen is often memed as convoluted simply because the system is very simple, but then the author uses it and develops it in incredibly complex but credible ways, while also keeping it very interesting and enticing.

Cradling has simple premises but then gets expanded upon, making it interesting. Thing is, as intriguing as this is, very few interesting things happen. The book is solely driven by the characters, and unfortunately for me, they get boring pretty fast. I didn’t like the way they interacted with each other in the beginning and I kind of got used to their little bantering, but it felt incredibly pointless. And lazily written, by which I mean that it felt that because I, as the reader, know that I’m going to get romance, the way the book was written doesn’t really make me root for the characters to be together, it expects it from me.

I also found the characterization incredibly lacking for both protagonists - while there are clear exceptions -, where I felt like the characterization started with the introduction of more characters (relatives) and ends there. At the same time, I still don’t really know what is one of the protagonist’s relationship with the main victim of the book - I know they knew each other, but how can I care for them having been murdered and their connection to one of the MCs if all their interactions are told and never shown?

Either way, I’m sorry if I’m going to disappoint people, but I wanted to love this and I did not. I wouldn’t recommend picking it up.