The thoughts of a Writer Who Reads, utterly disenchanted with everything but trying to love reading again
Gates of Thread and Stone by Lori M. Lee
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Long story short, here’s what got this book two stars and almost got it one: The romance. Every five seconds, Kai is going ON AND ON about Avan’s collar bones, his touch, his mouth, his muscles, his back, his hands, his butt, his voice, or his spine. She does the same thing with Reeve, who is supposedly her brother. And almost the same thing with Mason. This romanticizing and sexualizing is discordant with the better aspects of the story. I would say this book is a YA dystopian fantasy fiction that tells its story using mythology. So having to read through Kai’s almost daydream-like fixations on Avan and Reev’s bodies is annoying as hell. The romance is not written in such a way that it is in step with the rest of story so it wasn’t welcomed in my mind.
Kai’s interactions with boys coupled with her lack of positive, meaningful interaction with anybody else was a huge issue for me. The only female characters really mentioned are mean girl types and “the prostitute”. “The prostitute”? Really? Come on now. And Hina is barely a character since Kai spends most of her time lodged up Reev and Avan’s butts as if they are the only people on the planet.
I was also looking forward to seeing more Infinite. Conquest, Strife, Death, and Famine–that’s what we get. That’s really depressing. All the Infinite can’t be such depressing figures.
Yes, the pacing was slow but that’s not what bothered me. The story is written in the first person, from prospective of Kai. I would ordinarily write off a character like Kai as a “d”-chasing airhead. Yet I gave the book a chance and read through the whole thing. I weep for the wasted potential of this story.
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