Sunday 30 March 2014

Book Review - Arch Enemy

Title: Arch Enemy
Author: Frank Beddor
Series: The Looking Glass Wars (book 3)
Publisher: Egmont
Release Date: 1st October 2009
ISBN13: 9781405251938

Synopsis
The battle for Wonderland has come to a head and the Heart Crystal's power has been depleted thanks to King Arch's devastating weapon, WILMA. Imagination has been wiped from the land and the people of Wonderland have lost their greatest asset. Most alarmingly, even Queen Alyss is without her powers as her Queendom hangs in the balance. 


My Review
I read the first two books in the series quite quickly and really enjoyed them, I started this one but for multiple reasons I haven't had much time to read over the last week or so so this got put to the side. I had a day off today so decided to finish it. 
Alyss and Redd are still at war but now they also have a common enemy - Arch. Determined to take over and make Wonderland into a Kingdom he disables the Heart Crystal rendering Alyss and Redd's powers useless. 
Alyss must try to defeat Arch and get rid of Redd before all of Wonderland is lost forever.
I was expecting great things from this book after the first two and I wanted it to answer all my questions and I don't know just be exciting. I have to admit I was a little disappointed. The plot felt very disjointed to me, it would move from one scenario and character to another, back and forth and I found myself losing interest and forgetting what was going on. I would just get into part of it and it would change to something else. Not only that but it felt more complicated than it needed to be, I started to get bored, I just wanted the book to get on with it. Normally I will sit and read a book and look at teh page numbers and be like 'wow I've read over 100 pages already' but with this one I would look and be like 'has it really only been 30 pages!' It just seemed to be really slow and at times I had to make myself keep reading.
Overall the story isn't bad and it does resolve 99% of events and character questions but I just feel like it could have been done a lot quicker and with less interruptions.
Good if you want to finish the series, but a bit disappointing in my opinion.

My Rating
     

2 comments:

Jazz R.J. said...

Oh. Someone else has read this series. I haven't seen many people talk about it. I'm rereading the series now. I loved all three books equally. I don't remember thinking that the last book was disjointed but then again I haven't read it in a while. I think I was enjoying the characters so much by that point that maybe I didn't notice. Anyway thanks for sharing your thoughts. I like to hear other people think.

barmybex said...

Yeah, not many people seem to know about or talk about this series.
I loved the characters in the earlier books but they started to annoy me in this one, so maybe that distanced me from the story a bit. Just didn't click with me, but I agree- good to hear other people's opinions. Hope you enjoy it if you re-read it. :D