Frozen Tides (Falling Kingdoms, #4) by Morgan Rhodes, Michelle Rowen

Frozen Tides (Falling Kingdoms, #4)

by Morgan Rhodes, Michelle Rowen

1 star

DNF at 44%

I’ve seen so many amazing reviews about this series, all praising how amazing the story is, or how much the characters have gradually improved; and yes, all of that is technically true, but barely. The one thing that differentiates these books from other YA fantasies is that more people die. That’s it. Other than that, it’s all dull characters doing dull stuff. I’m a big believer that every reader can have a different relationship with the same book, and unfortunately, there’s no spark there for me. For some reason I can’t get truly involved with the story, on a completely personal level, but I can objectively tell where’s the appeal. But everything just felt very meh to me.

The one exception to all of the above: Magnus. He’s the perfect character in a myriad of ways: his journey is very well developed, his personality is 100% amazing (gotta love that sass), and my relationship with him is the one that’s changed the most (from outright uneasiness to unconditional love; so he’s naturally the one I feel closest to). Second best is Cleo, which is also an amazing character: confident, brave, honest, relentless.

As great as these two are, there’s the problem: I only got through this first half because of them. The rest of the POVs felt like mountains I had to climb to get my Magnus-Cleo time, which, as awesome as it was, shouldn’t be the sole reason for which I read the whole thing.

In conclusion: just more of the same vacuous feeling I got after the first three. I’m so bored by this I don’t even want to know how it ends. Three and a half is enough for me.