Twice Dead ~ Caitlin Seal (The Necromancer's Song #1)
★★★☆☆
I received this eARC from Charlesbridge Teen on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of this book in any way.
Obligatory Summary
Naya Garth is a Talmiran, and like all good Talmirans, she despises the undead—walking corpses and wraiths—who live freely in neighboring Ceramor. Years ago the Mad King tried to use an army of undead to win a deadly war, and ever since he was taken down, the Powers have controlled Ceramor with the Treaty of Lith Lor.
When Naya goes to Ceramor with her merchant father and mysteriously dies, the last thing she expected was to become a wraith and a spy for Talmir. Posing as a necromancer's servant, Naya must learn to navigate the world of politics and aether while her loyalties are tested by the helpful and kind wraith Corten who represents everything she's been trained to hate but makes her feel alive after death.
The Writing and Worldbuilding
This book suffered from an excellent idea that had a mediocre execution. The writing was fairly standard and lacked a strong narrative voice, the characters and world felt like they only existed when they were on the page, and the plot lacked steady tension and direction.
A huge pacing issue was the characters. Most of the characters who played pivotal roles didn't exist until they were important, even if that was 80% through the book. It made everything feel so jumbled and confusing sometimes and made it hard for me to care about anyone.
Ceramor was constantly said to be struggling under the tyranny imposed by the Treaty of Lith Lor (an obvious Treaty of Versailles parallel if i ever saw one) but the book didn't actually ever show that. No one was poor. The streets were clean and the economy and technological progress were doing okay. If anything, society seemed stagnant, but in no way oppressed. Nothing was wrong in Ceramor.
Besides that, the author missed obvious opportunities to explore Naya's emotions and the complexities of life after death. Instead of explaining through actions what was different and how she felt after being murdered and resurrected and told her whole life was a lie and being forced to live as the thing she was raised to hate, we skipped all that and went straight to her grimly accepting it after a few weeks, with little tidbits like the fact that she doesn't sleep anymore just thrown in later on. It seriously distanced me from her character and made me extremely bored very quickly. It's things like that that make me wonder if and how well this book was beta read.
The Characters
Naya Garth: She was alright, but I couldn't really get a clear grasp of who she was even was because of how passively she waa written (third person perhaps wasn't the best method for this story). Besides that, so much of her past was glossed over or half explained that certain events at the end felt unearned and lazily done, particularly about her father.
Corten: He was sweet and all, but honestly I got bored of him pretty quick. He was just another one of those ~I'm the younger son and I want to live my own life, mom! I'm gonna find my own path! I don't need you (but thanks for all the money and the excellent upbringing and education)~ which just made some of his characteristics feel incongruous and conflicting to the point of unbelievability.
Lucia Laroke: I liked her enough but it was super unclear how old she was, because I kept picturing her as a frail old woman, but then Alejandra couldn't have been much older than 40, which makes their relationship kinda creepy tbh.
Valn: Honestly, he was extremely tropey and I got bored pretty quick.
Conclusion
I should have DNF'd this. It took me over a month to read this ARC and I'm not a slow reader. I read 600 page tomes in one sitting on a regular basis. This is half that size but it was just so b o r i n g! I honestly don't give a crap about this book so there's no doubt that I won't be reading the sequel.
Twice Dead more like twice dead to me! *drum riff*
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