Crown of Crimson by Karina Halle Book Review

Ratings

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  Content Warning: Sexual Scenes, Language, Sexual Assault, Abuse— Mental and Emotional

Introduction

DNF at 50%

What a snooze fest. I rolled my eyes through so much of this book I’m surprised I can still see straight. I also zoned out through most of the monologs because it seemed redundant or non-important. I had to literally skip chapters because I was so bored and nothing was moving. The pace was wild, the character’s actions didn’t make sense, and this book was a mess. I couldn’t even finish the book.

Also, the grammatical errors were atrocious! There were so many mistakes that it distracted me from the story. I wanted to take a pen and go to town on correcting everything. So many missing commas!

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

Plot

Plot? What plot? There was none! I’m utterly upset at the lack of plot and character growth in this book.

The “betrayal” from Hanna was not that big of a deal. She wanted to see her father and she didn’t even want to be in the Land of the Dead anyways. Death was just wanting to use her for the prophecy. So, I don’t see why it was such a big deal. He didn’t love Hanna, only lusted after her. 

Not to mention, most of what happened was because they didn’t communicate with each other! I can’t stand a miscommunication troupe to this scale. In some instances, I can understand it, but not when you’re treating each other like shit and punishing them. 

Characters

Hanna

Dear gods, where do I start with Hanna? Flat, boring, childish, I could go on. Instead of being a 24-year-old (like myself), it felt like she was 17. Honestly, if there weren’t so many explicit scenes, then this book could fall into the YA genre. 

Can we talk about how she already knows how to defend herself because of her capoeira training, but the book (and herself) talk like she doesn’t know anything? She can defend herself! She used Lovia’s sword for gods sake! She’s not some weak human that can’t do anything for herself. We were explicitly told that she can fend for herself in the previous book. 

Death

I couldn’t stand Death’s POV. It felt like I was reading for a 20-something fuckboi’s POV. It was horrible. I didn’t get the godly, dark, brooding vibes I was hoping for. Instead, it was whiny, self-centered, and straight bastard vibes.

Death was such a flat character. He only thought about sex and nothing else. When he was trying to be sentimental it felt disturbing and unnatural. But, of course, nothing about his and Hanna’s relationship is natural.

Also, can we talk about how shitty it was for Death to throw Hanna in the oubliette? That’s straight up abuse, and scenes later they’re fucking like everything is okay? That is not okay. 

Side Characters

 I actually wanted to see more of Loughi, but I couldn’t force myself to get to her parts of the book. She seemed like an interesting villain. Plus I was interested in seeing what she did with Rasmus.

Writing

There are errors in my book, especially when transitioning to the next page– i.e. missing sentences, words, weird formatting, etc. Not sure if it’s my book specifically or if this was how it was printed in general. So, I’m not taking stars off for it, but it has caused some confusion while reading. There were also grammatical errors, I noticed as well– missing commas mainly. I proofread/edit/write on the side, so these things stick out to me.

The writing and characters are also immature and juvenile. I mean that’s a letdown when you have a god-like Death ruling for eons. His tone, dialect, etc. should be different from modern-day slang.

There were also discrepancies on things, such as the “Stragglers” now being called the “Bone Stragglers,” and Hanna not seeing the solar room when she clearly did in the first book (Raila took Hanna there on her grand tour). Like, you can’t just change things like this between books. Stay consistent! 

Conclusion

Ultimately, I made it through chapter 19— which what the fresh hell was that?— and decided that was it. I couldn’t take any more of this weird, lust-only relationship they had. The ancient magical world of the dead did not mingle well with Hanna’s horrible pop culture references. And the dialect? Too modern for my tastes.

I am gravely disappointed in this book, in this series. I had high hopes for it and all of it came crashing down. I’m at a loss for trying to formulate my emotions into words. The only thing that really sums it all up is: I hate this book. I am riding my hands and my mind of this series and going on to better books. 

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What did you think of the book? Did you like it or could you have done without it? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

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