Celeste, the wise and beautiful queen of Vehrys, has been betrayed.On the night of her 26th birthday, the man who had loved her since their shared childhood poisoned her, stabbed her, and then left her for dead.Since then, the sun hasn’t risen in their land. Since then, bloodthirsty and abhorrent beasts have roamed the earth and slain her innocent people.Kiev, her traitorous husband, is the son … traitorous husband, is the son of her neighboring kingdom’s vile queen. For years the two kingdoms had been at war, until hers and his marriage. Celeste had never doubted the substance of his love, until now.
The fair queen finds herself caught in a battle between light and dark; the purest of good and most dreadful of evil. As she battles for survival, she also fends to maintain her sanity in the terrifying and dark new world. Hope for her husband dwindles more with each passing day, but the faint spark of unexpected new love drives her to keep fighting for her kingdom.
With her recently discovered magic and the aid of an ancient deity, she must attempt to rid her land of the terrifying abominations stalking its people. Can she do so before her former love destroys her new one? More importantly, can she rid the world of this suffocating darkness before the evil causing it overtakes her soul?
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My final thoughts on Celeste was that the story was definitely entertaining. It had magic, beasts, gods/deities, females characters that could handle their own in a fight, and interesting characters. Now I’d be lying if I said this book was perfect. There were certainly some aspects of it that I wasn’t necessarily feeling. But overall, I ended up enjoying the story being told and the characters this author created.
I had a sort of love/hate relationship with Celeste. I didn’t find her character to be all that endearing and sometimes annoying given how she’d break down and have a meaningless conversation in the middle of battles where her life was in danger. I liked that she wasn’t this hardened person and had vulnerabilities, but I think she broke down at the most inopportune times. I also didn’t care for her love triangle. The other thing about this book is that I would have liked more world building and the history behind people’s gifts, the beliefs they had in their deities, and where the magic originated. It would have made for an even more compelling story and I think it bugged me that the Queen Celeste didn’t seem all that interested in faith as Mauve did. It was strange.
I will say there was plenty of action and the women held their own in a fight even if they were made to seem so amazingly skilled that even Celeste’s most fearsome general Scythe could not hold up in a fight next to her. Nonetheless, the action was great. I liked reading about the decaying beasts she had to fight and plagued their lands as well.
If the author ever releases another book in this series, I’d probably end up reading it.
I received a complimentary copy of this book for free to give a voluntary honest review. This review contains only my own thoughts and opinions of this book. First of, thank you Samantha Eklund for the opportunity and I apologize for taking more time with it than promised.
I had planned to be done with the book and review in the middle of October and it is now the last day of December. Suffice to say, if the low star rating hasn’t tipped you off already then the time it took to finish reading should say plenty of what I thought about Celeste. It’s not that the writing was bad or anything. On the contrary. There was clear talent visible in the story and no one can accuse the author of lack of imagination with such a unique idea and original execution. However, for all it’s good qualities it sadly couldn’t replace or cover up the important pieces of a good story that was lacking or missing completely.
In screenwriting they have the known and top priority rule; show, don’t tell. While a book is built up and made in a completely different manner, I still feel that that rule applies to books too, and in some ways even more. Because Celeste made me really miss that rule. For one, I couldn’t really live myself in in that world the plot was painting for me. Mainly because I was not given a fair chance to. The way things were explained were like someone summarizing an event or recapping something that had happened, instead of letting me experience everything alongside the characters. While I’m sure the author has passion for the world and characters she’s created, I could not feel said passion while reading when it was formatted the way it was. Because it felt recapped and passionless I just couldn’t find it in myself to care about this great love we were told about or about the betrayal. Nor the terrifying situation Celeste found herself and her kingdom in or the sort-of triangle drama. Worst of all, a similar tragedy that usually gets me crying real good did nothing for me in this story. If we readers had gotten the opportunity to see the characters lives and relationships played out and developed it wouldn’t have felt so summarized and I would probably have been invested in the characters and plot. For example, I would have liked to see how Celeste and Kier fell in love or got to know each other (e.g. through flashbacks) or even if there were some normal dialogues between the major characters that wasn’t there just to progress the story.
Another thing that a good story need is a flawed protagonist. Celeste was all but that. In fact she was so ridiculously perfect that it was just unrealistic. She was beautiful, humble, smart, able to kill monsters no one else could, is favored by god above everyone else, makes zero mistakes, empathetic and selfless to a very naive and self destructing degree and everyone adores her. She survived against all odds with no wounds and barely any mental scars. This character annoyed me to no end. Why? Because a flawed character is a relatable character. And a perfect character reminds the reader that he or she is not. Her out of the world perfect personality did not help me feel for her or connect with her either. To me her and most characters felt … not one dimensional per say, but not very complex either. And as much as the story tried to tell me that there was conflict and struggle for her I just couldn’t believe it. A lot of it was contradicted since she was handed everything she needed on a silver platter. Out of nowhere she learned her power and how to use it, she had Scythe and the wolf fighting foes for her, the god gave her all the needed information and tools to not only survive and heal but to get one step ahead of the enemy. Where exactly was the struggle in that? I did not see her having to go to lengths to learn how to use her powers, or fight a difficult battle to win the war. It was the people around her that had the struggle just for the fact that she was handed everything she needed.
I know I’m being very critical, but honestly I can see good potential and I think Samantha Eklund is a promising author. Her storytelling just needs some polishing and work. If Celeste had a faster tempo for the plot and was directed towards a younger audience I think it would go a lot further.