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Marta

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One Dark Window (The Shepherd King, #1)

by Rachel Gillig (Goodreads Author)

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Marta said: "

Mild spoilers ahead.
I am only half through but I found several issues:

1) Writing style: the author decided to write in first person and used a more contemporanean prose, despite this being set in an medieval or early modern period. They also overused

Mild spoilers ahead.
I am only half through but I found several issues:

1) Writing style: the author decided to write in first person and used a more contemporanean prose, despite this being set in an medieval or early modern period. They also overused full names, full titles, short sentences, overdescriptive wors and short sentences... All these writing choices made extremely hard to read and "see" the scenes.
2) Plot: the key components of the plot are interesting but underused because of the next issue:
3) World and Character building:
A) regarding the world building, in a romantasy I am not asking to do a Brandon Sanderson, but this world is very limited: a mist, a disease, the myth of the magical cards (including king and tree spirit), families with family trees and that's it. The book was too short but I think that even with 30 pages more it would have been possible to do a decent world building. Why this is important? Because this would help character building and also would make the plot les predictable.
B) character building: our protagonist is so boring. She sounds like a pick me, I am not like other girls. She hates everything and everyone and is an asshole, there is nothing girly about her. Her personality doesn't make sense. I started thinking she was from a poor family but some pages in we realise that her father is a noble. We know nothing about her likes or hobbies, only her misantrophi. And Inget it, she was "rejected" by her family, lost her mother (at what age and how we don't know). Also, we don't know why Ione and her were besties? Like they have nothing in common, they have zero conversations other that their fathers ans Ione's engagement to the prince. Also it was obvious from moment 1 that she was going to get engaged to the prince and it is treated as a surprise. Also, our protagonist hates for no seeming reason the royal family and she speaks shit of them, it is not until much later that we get to know some plausible reasons why she dislikes them so much.

Some plotholes and inconsistencies, there ar at least 3 ppl who were infected and 2 spared by the king himself, who is supposed to be killing all of them. Also, the captain is infected but his division is in charge of finding and killing people with the disease. It could make sense if the king was unaware, but the king knows and makes him captain? And he has no spine so he kills people with the disease despite the fact that he also has it? Of he got the disease after becoming captain, keeps it a secret and then comes to terms with his past actions, it would have made some sense, but no.... ...more "

03 juin 2025 22:45 · see review