26th finished book of the year: The Empire of Gold by S.A. Chakraborty

2 ⭐️ - The engaging plot of the first book slowed during the second and now crawls in this final book in the trilogy to an unsatisfying end

I’ll allow that perhaps the issue I found with The Daevabad Trilogy was just page creep, with the feeling of pacing becoming slower and slower the more pages were added. While the second book’s 20% length increase being almost justified given the large span of time it covered, this time round we’ve almost eight-hundred pages used to cover a very short period of time.

I’ll be honest, I lost interest a number of times and had to really force myself to finish this book. I did actively want to find out what happened in the end, but I can’t claim to have been remotely satisfied with it when I got there.

There’s slow-burn romance and then there’s whatever this was, which was barely romance at all. 

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25th finished book of the year: The Kingdom of Copper by S.A. Chakraborty

3.5 ⭐️ - While the setting and plot was still good, the pacing didn't feel as engaging this time around

I went into this book quite excited after the first and while it was interesting to continue following the characters, and it maintained a lot of the same charm, it was just a bit too slow and heavy for my tastes. There wasn't anything specifically wrong about it, but between splitting the book into three characters perspectives and there being lots of new characters introduced, it felt over-packed and a bit meandering.

The pacing picked up towards the end of the book, but because the climax was fairly clearly telegraphed, it felt like most of the pages up until that point were just delaying the expected events. The characters develop a little, and we see some interesting growth from them along the way. There's also some unexpected gains and losses, which keep you on your foes - but again, these are mainly at the end.

I'll be reading the third book, if only for completion, but I can't say I'm as excited this time around.

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