Author: Victoria Aveyard
Publisher: Harper Teen
Publication Date: February 7, 2017
Pages: 507
Format: Hardcover/Own
When the Lightning Girl’s spark is gone, who will light the way for the rebellion?
Mare Barrow is a prisoner, powerless without her lightning, tormented by her lethal mistakes. She lives at the mercy of a boy she once loved, a boy made of lies and betrayal. Now a king, Maven Calore continues weaving his dead mother’s web in an attempt to maintain control over his country—and his prisoner.
As Mare bears the weight of Silent Stone in the palace, her once-ragtag band of newbloods and Reds continue organizing, training, and expanding. They prepare for war, no longer able to linger in the shadows. And Cal, the exiled prince with his own claim on Mare’s heart, will stop at nothing to bring her back.
When blood turns on blood, and ability on ability, there may be no one left to put out the fire—leaving Norta as Mare knows it to burn all the way down.
Review: I'm gonna be straight up here. I was going to give this book 4 stars up until the ending. I was actually going enjoying most of the development until the ending just ruined that by going right back to what I didn't like.
So despite the fact that I thought the first half was kinda slow and mostly filler, I did enjoy getting more in depth with Maven. We all suspected Elara poisoned him more than was shown before and we get more detail on it. Apparently Elara was twisting Mavens mind from when the poor kid was a toddler. No wonder he has issues. Elara has been twisting and destroying his mind since like 1-2 years old. Not to mention she completely took away his capability to love his dad and his brother. She destroyed Maven and took anything he could have held onto for her own twisted schemes. Granted, Maven is now carrying on with all this evil all by himself now, so he now has no one to blame for his downfall but himself. He just decided to try and keep going with the schemes started by his mother. He also showed he had a creepy obsession with Mare. He claims he loves her and wants to protect her from everyone, which is why he doesn't kill her when he captured her. But still. He shows his "love" in odd ways. While I felt bad for him learning what Elara did to him, I lost that after he decided to literally screw over everyone all on his own.
You know whose perspective was actually my favorite in this book? Evangelines! I know. I said I really disliked her in Red Queen, but she just grew on me in this book. When you actually get to be in her head, and experience things through her, you really change your view of her. She is a woman scorned in this book. She lost her place as the upcoming queen when Cal was exiled. She gained it back by becoming Maven's betrothed. And then in this book, Maven just throws that out and marries the princess of the Lakelands to form an "alliance." This girl has had enough! We also find out she has a secret female lover. Her and her brother had this whole plan to keep their families in power and close but still able to be with who they wanted. All that was thwarted when Cal was exiled and Maven tossed Evangeline aside. And even worse, now Evangeline's dad who has formed his own kingdom, is now trying to marry off Evangeline back to Cal when he retakes the throne for alliances. This poor girl! She wants no part of this. And neither does Cal honestly. They are being played like fiddles. I really feel for Evangeline in this book. She seems like an angry, awful person, but in reality, shes just trying to fight for what little control she can have in her life. I hope she can break free from all this.
You know whose perspective I didn't understand? Camerons. She was just as crabby and whiny as Mare. She constantly put Cal down, despite all he was trying to do to help. She only talked about saving her brother. Even if it put the Scarlet Guard in jeopardy. I mean, in all honesty, we already had one whiny character in this book, why add another? Out of all her chapters, there were only like two that had some genuine meaning behind them and felt warranted. I much rather would have had Cal's POV since he played a bigger part in everything. It would have made much more sense. Plus we learn about the whole BIG thing involving his grandmother from Evangelines POV first. Like how does this make sense??
And then of course we have Mare. She's still an issue. We get so much complaining about her captivity. Guys, she's being held in the palace with a nice room. Complete with bathroom, bed, books, table, meals. Like she's being treated like a special guest. Not being held in a literal cage with no food or stuff like an actual prisoner. Sure, being held against her will with silent stone isn't exactly pleasant, but she really makes things seem worse than they actually were. I'm sure other prisoners would have loved to have her accommodations. On top of that she gets mad about being left alone in her room or being used by Maven to lie about the Scarlet Guard. But yet she goes along with the lies and actually throws fits, breaking things, just to get Mavens attention. She claims to hate him but yet keeps trying to get close to him. Contradict yourself much Mare? I actually started liking her again after she was rescued. She opens up a little to Cal, they have a happy reunion and actually seem to get their feelings for each other in check, she works on improving her powers, training more. And then the ending happens. Cal looks like he is going to have to take the throne back for himself to end the war but instead of supporting the person she loves, she gets mad again. She acts like he's betraying her, again. She literally cannot see the bigger picture with this. Cal doesn't even want the throne but yet is being pushed to do it and he can't even have the support of the woman he loves because she's selfish and only thinks about their relationship if she can have it her way. I'm so aggravated. For a split second, Mare seemed like she was growing as a character, and then nope. Door slammed shut. She literally is the same character she was before.
Can I just have more Evangeline in the next book? Out of all the POVs in this book. Hers was the best. I did like some of the side stories. Like Farley being pregnant with Shades baby. After what happened to him, I thought this was precious so she and the Barrow family could at least still have some piece of Shade in their life. I also have to admit, I thought the houses turning against each other was a fun addition to the story. Kept things interesting at least. At this point, I'm not even sure if I'll enjoy War Storm.
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