Raven's Shadow - Anthony Ryan

I liked the new format. Adding more points of view (4 + frame PoV) was a good idea. I prefer the first person + frame of the first book to multiple Pov + frame of the second. However the change allowed the second book to have more freedom for the story which made sense given what he was trying to do. It's different, but that isn't a mark against it.

The problem is that at least two (maybe three) of the PoVs were kind of shitty. He's not good at writing female PoV's, or the female PoV's he wrote were really awful. He straight ruined the princess by turning her character from a villain / antagonist to an ally / PoV character. In the first book she was this bad ass female Machiavelli. In this book she's a second-rate Khaleesi.

The new female assassin started out interesting. By the end of the book I was skipping her chapters. Not sure why I lost interest. Might have been when she mastered the sword after spending a week with the main character training her.

What?

It took years for the main character to master the sword. Yet she becomes an effortless bad ass after a week of training? It felt like the author regretted making the main character male and was trying to fix it by adding her as a back up. The entire book revolved around her, which I guess could have worked if she had an interesting story. It was a gamble to put so much emphasis on her and it didn't work.

The other male character, was his journey fucked up and sad or what? Not sure what the point of having him as a PoV character was. Some of the best moments in the book came from his PoV though, so I guess it's a wash.

The main character's story in this book was weak. At one point one of the characters says something like, "When the main character shows up everything will be okay." Then a side character's all like, "What if he doesn't bring enough troops to fix this shit?" And the first character responds, "Nah bro, as long as the main character is here, BY HIMSELF, he'll fix this shit. Trust me. He's got this." Classic Superman dilemma. He spent 99% of the book traveling to the last fight, shows up and magically fixes everything then loses his power. Fun to read, but for a book about a massive surprise invasion - nothing really changed.

He had so much material from the first book to work with but instead decided to add new villains and turn old villains into allies. Adding more information about the King from the princesses point of view has not helped his character. The other love interest was basically dropped from the story entirely and a secondary character steps in to replace her role in the love triangle.

Book could have been much better.

WHAT THE FUCK WAS UP WITH THE ENDING? SO CONFUSED.

My Theory: Some random gifted guy shows up out of nowhere to rescue the wench from her rather contrived stupidity (leaving the safe area with only 1 untrained guard ) and then decides to heal her thus undoing the only interesting thing to happen to her all novel long. No doubt Sorna will get his mojo back as well which is a pity as I thought the series rapidly went downhill ever since his spider sense started to dictate the course of all his actions.

"Well men we are vastly outnumbered, under trained, unblooded and exhausted after weeks of forced marching from one end of the continent to the other... but well damn it my lesbo sidekick is in a rather tough spot and I'm going to get her out of it so follow me if you want... CHHAARRGEEEE!!!!