REVIEW: THE LAST NAMSARA (Kristen Ciccarelli)

Welcome to Paint by Numbers, the YA Fantasy edition!

I was unimpressed by The Last Namsara by Kristen Ciccarelli. Another good concept bites the dust. Let's go through this:

THE PROSE:

Weak. It's like Ciccarelli was trying to do the absolute minimum to set up any given scene. I see that she was leaning more into the emotional elements of narration, which would have been fine if those elements didn't read as faux-deep intellectualism. Every time an "old story" came up, I rolled my eyes. Here's an actual line from this book: "He was waiting in the tees, waiting for the girl to come out of the rock. It was dark and he was waiting." Or how about: "Judging from the bows slung across their backs, they were archers." Who edited this?

TROPE CITY:

Okay, tropes are tropes for a reason. I don't hate them implicitly. But COME ON. This whole book relies so intensely on them that it was actually funny. "She let out a breath she didn't know she was holding" and dude-suddenly-just-KNOWING-how-to-ride-a-dragon were among my most eye-rolly. It feels like Ciccarelli leaned SO FAR into these tropes that she felt like all the work was done for her. Badass female protagonist? Done. Forbidden love? Okay. Kingdom at war? Sure. But like... what about it? There was next to no development of any of these, which is a real shame because DRAGONS.

THE CONFLICT:

...Why is the conflict even an issue?

THE ROMANCE:

Oh, god. I love romance. I do. But what was this? I spent half the time wanting to punch Asha and the other half wondering what it was about Torwin that got her so hot and bothered. You know, besides her needing to be in love with someone, I guess. Every scene with them had me like, "K."

THE PROTAGONIST:

Asha is stupid. For real. Like she's a certified dumbass. You could tell her anything and she'd be like "I believe it!!!" In fact, that's basically the entire book. I don't have energy to talk about Asha. Out of all the protagonists I've followed this year, she's easily my least favourite.

***

Listen, I'm giving this 3 stars instead of 2 because I can see what this book wanted to be. Somewhere underneath the cringe, there's a wonderful book about the power of stories and what we stand to lose without them. But this ain't it, sis. This book is tired and so am I. The only thing I cared even a little bit about were the dragons -- and even then, I can't help but wonder if that's because, unlike the rest of the characters in The Last Namsara, they didn't speak.

I need a nap. And a good book.

(Originally posted on Goodreads: March 3, 2019)