Review: Our War by Craig DiLouie

Our War by Craig DiLouie

Orbit

Publication Date: August 20th, 2019

Hardcover. 400 pages

About Our War:

"When the president of the United States is impeached, but refuses to leave office, the country erupts into civil war. 

10-year-old Hannah Miller, an orphan living in besieged Indianapolis, has joined a citizen's militia. She had nowhere else to go. And after seeing the firsthand horrors of war, she's determined to fight with the Free Women militia. 

Hannah's older brother, Alex, is a soldier too. But he's loyal to the other side. After being separated from Hannah, he finds a home in a group calling themselves The Liberty Tree militia. 

When a UNICEF worker and a reporter discover that both sides are using child soldiers, they set out to shine a light on something they thought could never happen in the United States. But it may be too late because even the most gentle children can find that they're capable of horrific acts."

I finished this book about a week ago and I am still conflicted on how I feel about it and how to rate it. On the one hand, there are elements that make this a really great book with incredible depth and meaning, but on the other hand, there are more than a few elements that simply didn't work for me and left me feeling uncertain. However, I did read through this book in only about two days, so that says something about just how compelling this book ws and how much it dragged me in overall. I've not seen any less than glowing reviews for Our War, though, which leads me to believe that any issues I had might just be very much my own personal opinion.

Our War is not a book for the fainthearted, but it is a book for anyone interested in timely themes, compelling narratives, and characters from a variety of unique backgrounds. The first word that comes to mind when I think about the civil war depicted in this book is 'chaos,' as there is seemingly no end to the unpredictability of this war and the disarray that surrounds it on all fronts. While the lawlessness of the war felt realistic, I felt that the telling of this chaotic war didn't necessarily work well for the reader to follow along with. I had a hard time following along at time and deciphering between all of the different sides and who was who. There's more than just two sides in this war and it's the grey areas among all of them that added depth and realism, but that also left me somewhat confused.

Despite my confusion over the sides in this horrendous civil war, I was impressed by the sheer world-building of it all. DiLouie does a great job creating an America that is nearly unrecognizable, mired in the depths of war and death and violence that go along with it. Everything is in chaos. The cities that we know so well have been turned into battle sites filled with hatred and desperation. There are IEDs everywhere and snipers waiting in the wings making it a life-risking move to stop and stand still for even a second on the street--it's a true, dangerous war space

DiLouie's writing style is intense fast-paced. The story switches POV between five characters among a myriad of short chapters. Having so many chapters didn't really allow me to fully invest myself in any given character's situation, but I did still appreciate how this gave such a comprehensive look at this war from a variety of different angles and perspectives. One of the things that DiLouie did best with his writing was to provide this multi-faceted view of the war that really allows the reader to get into the heads of people on all sides and explore those grey areas. Of the five characters we follow, two are child soldiers, one is a lieutenant, one is a reporter, and the last is a UNICEF worker from Canada whose mission is to provide aid to the children of the war. As I mentioned earlier, having these multiple perspectives, though I do wish they hadn't all been quite so rushed. I was most interested in Hannah, a child soldier, and reporter Aubrey's POV and most enjoyed seeing their role in this war.

My only other issue with Our War is that the ending seemed to wrap up a bit too quickly for my liking. I felt as though DiLouie was really building up to something, but unfortunately I felt as though the action and impact sort of tapered off in a disappointing way. I'm not sure if perhaps DiLouie was attempting to imitate how disappointing and anticlimactically war itself can be, but for me I was just left wanting a little more. This is similar to how I felt about the chaos of the book--it fit the story well, but it also made it difficult for me to follow along at times.

Overall, I've given Our War 3.75 stars. This rating may move up or down depending on how I feel about it in the future, but for right now I just have too many mixed emotions to give it a firm higher rating. This is still a book I highly recommend to anyone interested in the premise--it's intense, thought-provoking, and a compelling read.

*I received an ARC of Our War courtesy of Orbit books in exchange for an honest review. This has no effect on my rating or enjoyment of the novel.*

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The Glittering Court by Richelle Mead

The Glittering Court by Richelle Mead. Razorbill, 2016. Ebook. 400 pages.

I'll just jump right into this and say that The Glittering Court was disappointing, to say the least.

I picked up this book without knowing much about it. The first ~30% or so of this book was pretty solid. It wasn't anything groundbreaking, but I was enjoying myself for the most part and was being entertained, despite occasional awkward happenings. It was around this point that I noticed this book had fairly average-to-negative reviews, which completely surprised me. I knew it wasn't great, but it wasn't that bad, was it? Well, I spoke too soon, because eventually it all started to make sense.

As I continued on, I found myself becoming increasingly bored and lacking interest in the story of our main character. I kept waiting for the climactic moment to hit and for the book to start wrapping up, but when I looked at my progress on my Kindle (I checked out an ebook from one of my library's Overdrive accounts), I found that I was only about 40% through. Uh, that's not a good sign. So, here are some of the problems I had.

First, the characters. I was much more interested in some of the side characters, such as Tamsin and Mira, who were Adelaide's roommates. They seemed to have so much more depth and development than Adelaide, our main character, ever had. Adelaide is... uninteresting. She is a high-born woman posing as a woman of lesser status, and let's be honest: she's not very good at it. Her character seems to run very hot and cold and I couldn't find myself caring much about her. Since reading the book, I have discovered that The Glittering Court is going to be part of a series of companion novels, with each one focusing on a different character, so maybe the ones focusing on Tamsin or Mira would be better. Or maybe not, who knows. Cedric, the love interest of Adelaide, was also quite disappointing, and I can't find much that was interesting about him. He was rather dry, and his big 'secret' that he kept from Adelaide turned out to be quite a letdown.

Another problem I had was with the plot itself. The story starts off following Adelaide, a high-born woman who disguises herself as a lower class woman in order to have some independence and attend a school in Adoria, which is the 'New World' in our story. This school is a form of finishing school in which young woman of lesser classes are trained taught etiquette and other skills with the ultimate goal of selling them off to wealthy men in this new world, ensuring a wealthy and enchanting life for the woman. As annoying as this is, I can't be annoyed with the author just yet, because plenty of books have rather horrid institutions like this. But then comes the fact that Adelaide chose to leave her home in order to escape an arranged marriage... and then chose to go to an institution that trains them be good wives for  - yep, you guessed - arranged marriages... what? This was all a little weird to me, but hey, I like to give books the benefit of the doubt, and I was entertained so why not keep going?

The weirdest part occurred when this book suddenly turned into a gold rush-esque story and Adelaide moved into a wild west scenario. I was completely confused throughout this entire portion. The whole time I was trying to figure out what was going on and how this book completely 180'd so drastically. Needless to say, this entire plot just felt jilted and confusing to follow.

Then, the romance. The romantic interest in The Glittering Court is entirely predictable, and although it is a gentle and generally cozy little romantic interest, it lacked any real passion. The two characters involved seemed to just one day decide they were completely mad for each without us ever really getting to see or understand how or why that happened. There were of course various flirtations between the two, but it went from awkward, uncertain flirtations to insta-love in a short matter of time; there was very little development that I could discern. 

The ending was also completely out of the blue for me, and frankly, it just didn't make sense. I think this is partly because this is a companion series, so we don't have all aspects of the story as one, but since the books are not released simultaneously, it makes it hard to understand everything. 

And a quick, final note: The Glittering Court is hardly a fantasy book. I kept waiting (quite patiently, I might add) for some fantastical elements, but alas, they never appeared. I think the fantasy portion derives from the fact that these are made-up lands with made-up names and institutions, but that's pretty much the extent of it. There is a made-up religion that I guess could potentially play the fantasy role, but it's fairly minimal and doesn't really do it. So if you're looking for some fantasy with magic or other fantastical elements, you might want to find something else.

Because of all the reasons listed above, I have to give The Glittering Court two stars, which I honestly feel really bad about. I just could not understand or get into this book very well. But, you win some and lose some, right?

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