“But I realize that people are just people, and they carry their own set of fears, dreams, desires, pains, and mistakes. I can’t expect someone else to make me feel complete; I must find it on my own.”
2.5 Stars
This really hurts me to say–but Divine Rivals was a bit of a miss for me 😦 Make no mistake, the writing is absolutely gorgeous and atmospheric; I wanted to love it so much! Unfortunately, it was a lot of atmosphere & anticipation with very little reward for anything outside of the love story.
The most fleshed-out aspect of the book was the love story unfolding between our “Enemies Rivals to Lovers” main characters, and that in itself was beautiful. However, I found myself frustrated and bored with the lack of outward-moving plot beyond that.. I had at one point made it 55% into this book and nothing had really “happened” if that makes sense; we see a lot of personal development and things happening in Iris’s life, but this slow-burn, character-driven story is set in a high-stakes fantasy world that the main characters don’t seem to have much to do with at all, and I can’t decide how I feel about it.
“She flicked on the desk lamp and carefully turned the pages, which were so old they were speckled with mold and felt like silk beneath her fingertips. Pages that smelled like dust and tombs and places that could be reached only in the dark. Pages full of stories of gods and goddesses from a long time ago. Before the humans had slain them or bound them deep into the earth. Before magic had begun to bloom from the soil, rising from divine bones, charming certain doorways and buildings and settling into a rare object.”
I think that Ross really could have left all the big, important world-building material out altogether; most of the time I felt like “Why aren’t we talking about THAT” and it gave me a sense of missing out. Additionally, I felt that the snippets of mythology/worldbuilding were grand and exciting, ultimately to lead nowhere; with how little this aspect was explored, I felt more like I was reading historical fiction of WWI.
This wasn’t for me, but I so appreciate the care and research that went into this story, and the depth of emotion portrayed surrounding war and all of its innocent victims.
Steady on Your Feet 