A squire, the survivor of a failed quest.
An immortal, timeless and unfathomable.
An assassin, skilled and heartless.
An old sorceress, holding secrets behind her teeth.
And a pirate’s daughter–the Ward’s last hope.–from the back cover of Realm Breaker
The heroes are gone, but the fight to save the world has only just begun.
Finally, I found the time to write my review of Realm Breaker for you! Between review requests that I needed to complete and just general life things, I just didn’t have the time to really write and post this sooner.
Now, you all know my feelings about Aveyard’s Red Queen series: the world-building is beautiful and almost all of the characters are fascinating and well-written, but Mare is terrible and ruins the whole thing for me. So, obviously, I had some nerves going into her new book. But then, one of my friends totally hyped this up for me, so I did go into it with a positive outlook.
And I can now happily say that Aveyard delivered with this one. I really enjoyed it, but keep reading my review of Realm Breaker to find out more about why I liked this book so much.
Review
For once, my favorite part of a book wasn’t the world-building! (But don’t get me wrong; it was still amazing and I’ll touch on it in a moment.)
I just loved the different perspectives in this book so much. Aveyard allowed us to see into the minds of so many awesome characters; I think I fell in love with every single one of them. Though, Erida was definitely my favorite out of the bunch; she was just so fascinating.
There were just so many varied personalities and backgrounds involved in the story, and that meant that we saw the problems and events at hand in so many different lights. We got to see things from the “good” side and from the “bad” side. And I thought Aveyard did a great job exploring the nuance between “bad” and “good,” at showing how it really isn’t black and white.
But moving on from the characters: As I said, the world-building was also amazing. Aveyard spent a lot of time developing all the different places in The Ward; there was an insane amount of detail that I, obviously, loved. And, honestly, she did a good job at weaving it into the storyline.
I didn’t even mind the few instances that could be dubbed info-dumping, because they usually took the form of one character filling in another character on the knowledge they didn’t know beforehand. In short, it felt realistic and didn’t break me out of being immersed in the story.
Finally, the plot was also great. To be fair, this book isn’t the best choice for someone who loves lots of action; the plot definitely had a slower pace. But I really enjoyed it, so I don’t have any real complaints.
TL,DR Recommendation
So, all things considered, if you’re a fan of fantasy books, I definitely recommend checking this one out. It straddles the line between YA and adult, but I think it falls more into the YA category based on its tone, even though a number of the characters are older. Still, that does mean people of all ages could easily enjoy reading it. And with excellent world-building and a cast bursting with exciting, complex characters, there’s plenty to be enjoyed.
If you do read this one, leave a comment down below and let me know your thoughts. I always love to talk about books! Additionally, if you enjoyed this review of Realm Breaker, you can use the Book Reviews tab above to access my full library of reviews. There, you’ll find plenty of other books I recommend reading.
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