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2 stars

I have finally finished the Red Queen series and... meh.

My thoughts on this book?



I knew from the start that I would not enjoy War Storm based on so many flaws I had with the series. I actually checked on both amazon and goodreads and I saw a lot of people not being happy with how it ended. And I can say that they were right. The ending was so disappointing, especially since we had to read four books to get where we are now in the finale.

This "War Storm" was nothing more than a light drizzle that lasted for 5 minutes.

If you've seen my previous reviews on the Red Queen series, you would know that I lean more on the meh to downright hating the series. I sort-of liked Red Queen, Glass Sword was somewhat tolerate but still had flaws, I did not like King's Cage, and surprise surprise, I did not like War Storm. This has got to be by far the most mediocre series I have read. I am not holding back on my thoughts on this review. I am unleashing my inner Khanh and spilling all the tea.



I will be splitting my review into two parts. Part one is my thoughts on War Storm and the second part is my retrospective thoughts on the series as a whole.

War Storm is like a gymnast performing a routine. Their routine is flawed at the beginning and at the middle. But they fail on the end. That is what I pictured War Storm as I read it. We're talking about a book that is nearly 700 pages and this is the best it could come up with. Disappointment after disappointment, especially with the plot and characters. There's no shock that Mare is her usual annoying, bratty self along with the other characters being boring or just annoying. I had to endure over 657 pages of slow pacing and annoying characters.



It was a miracle I even bothered to finish this considering how much I despise Mare. Even most of my friends gave up after Glass Sword because they could not stand Mare. But I'm finally done.

This review will be spoiler free.

Now, let's talk about this dumpster fire of a series.



Part 1: The Review

War Storm is the final book in the Red Queen series. Mare along with the Scarlet Guard is preparing for war as Maven and his army will try to kill Mare and Cal and also rule supreme of Norta. The stakes are high since this war could mean dismantling the monarchy or result in the Scarlet Guard failing.

Sounds promising? Wrong.

The threat of war is there but it was mainly about each character going through an existential crisis that took up a good chunk of their chapters. It was drama after drama combined with uninteresting characters and unnecessary chapters.

The one only one good thing to come out of this book is Evangeline, our sapphic queen. She is by far, the best character to ever grace this crap series. Along with Cameron, she is my favorite character because while everyone is running around being stupid, Evangeline keeps a level head and acts logically instead of with her feelings. She's sarcastic and straightforward with her thoughts. No sugar coating from this queen. I really did like her arc in this story. She is the sole reason why I didn't give this book a 1-star. Everything about her is just good. I may not have liked her at the beginning of the series, but she definitely grew on me. Her and Cameron.

Mare: Annoying, bratty, love, annoying, bratty, love, love!
Evangeline & Cameron: Shut the fuck up. *slaps Mare*

Now onto the bad things.

Characters

Excluding Evangeline, every other character in this book are just not good. If I had to make a list of worst being at the bottom and the best being at the top, it would look something like this:

1) Cameron
2) Evangeline
3) Maven
4) Iris
5) Cal
6) Mare

Mare by far is the most annoying and bratty character I have ever met in my life. I could not stand her whining and complaining so much. I didn't have a good opinion on her at the beginning and now I just hate her. She remains static throughout the series, never changing. If I had to describe her in 3 words, it would be: Bratty, annoying, and bland. I always think of her as a horse in my head because that is what mare means, a horse. A dumb, annoying, horse. It got on my nerves of how much she pines over Cal to the point where I just stopped caring about their romance. I wouldn't even call it a romance to begin with. She could die and I wouldn't care less. In fact, I will go to my rooftop and scream Halleluja at the top of my lungs.

Cal. Oh, Cal. My sweet, sweet Cal. I don't hate him, but my opinion on him went down after King's Cage. I wouldn't say he's a bad character, but like Mare, he did annoy me in the romance department. I still think of him as this boy king who only wants to do what is right. As flawed as his ideas were, I still rooted for him. I especially cheered for him when he decided to pursue his goals instead of pining over Mare. Granted, he pinned over her in this book which only hindered any development he had going. We also get to see from his POV in this book and to be honest: They were completely unnecessary. There are only 4 0r 5 chapters with his POV and they offered nothing to the story. If they weren't there, the book would be slightly shorter and nothing would change. Cal isn't a bad character, but I wished he wasn't so diluted in the last two books.

Iris. Hmmm. I'm not sure how to feel about her. I get why she was involved in the plot because of her marriage with Maven, but I did find her POV to be intriguing. As a character, she's cunning and deadly while being devoted to her land and her family. But there was something I found lacking in her. She's a cunning person, but that's about it, not much of a personality. Like I said, not a bad character, but not exactly compelling. The best way I would describe her would be colorful wallpaper. You know she's there, but not exactly something worth looking at again.

Maven. Victoria didn't do him justice here. I often find myself comparing him to the Darkling from the Grisha trilogy. But looking back now, I find Maven's character to me smothered down by everyone else. We do get his POV in this book as well and they offered more insight into what goes in his mind. Not a lot of development for him here, but at least I got to see what he's actually thinking. But with how Victoria wrote his arc, he didn't get to shine much. Which is disappointing because I really wanted to get to know him more.

Plot

"You know, maybe this rebellion would be further along if they didn't rely on teenagers so much."

That quote pretty much sums up my entire thoughts on the series. I would actually change it by adding "love-struck idiot teenagers" to it and that would sum up the Red Queen series. The plot for War Storm was slow and dragged on for so many pages. It didn't help that Mare's chapters were too long. As if I need another reason to hate her. The main issue with the series is the pacing issue and how sometimes the plot goes all over the place. Whether it be the Scarlet Guard or the other royal families, I could for the life of me not keep up with how the plot went everywhere and nowhere.

The Ending

I won't spoil the ending, but I will say that is was disappointing and underwhelming. I was expecting much more for the ending. But when I had 50 pages left of the story, I knew it would be a rushed ending. It reminded me a lot of the ending of The Fate of the Tearling where it also ended in a bad way.

Had the characters been written well instead of being archetypes, the plot be more fast-paced, gotten rid of the unnecessary scenes, and the ending was this could've been a decent finale. Instead, we got War Storm.

And I swear, if Victoria decides to make a spin-off series or continue the series, I'm gonna be fucking pissed.

Part 2: Retrospective review.

I’ve been with this series from the start when Epic Reads hyped up the hell out of Red Queen. When I first read it, I knew it would be the generic story of rebellion and power. The Red Queen series brings nothing new to the dystopian genre and is a basic series. And I think that’s where the problem lies with how Victoria didn’t try to make this series stand out among the other dystopian books. What’s worse is that it follows the same tropes most paranormal/dystopia novels have: Love triangle. When putting into consideration of how the Red Queen series is built upon, it’s just average, to say the least.

Mare, in particular, was what made the series all the more generic. As mentioned in my review, she is nothing more than the generic protagonist who for some Godforsaken reason is the beacon of the rebellion while struggling to figure out her love life. If you take away her being the image of the rebellion and the love triangle, there is nothing remotely interesting about Mare as an individual. You could argue that she wants the best for her family and the other Reds, but that’s pretty much every main character of a dystopia novel. She has no strong characteristics other than being a stubborn girl.

There is also the issue of the love triangle. From the start, the shipping wars began with people wanting MarexCal and MarexMaven which as the series progresses, becomes less and less interesting. With how bland the series was, the one thing I saw that was prevalent in the Red Queen fandom was who Mare was going to end up with. And if you did complete the series or finished the 3rd book, then you know who the love interest will be. It’s painfully obvious who she would choose. This love triangle was nothing more than a plot device for drama between Mare, Cal, and Maven. There shouldn’t even have been a love triangle to the story if it was going nowhere.

I will give credit where credit is due by saying that parts of the series were entertaining. Granted, a majority of each book has slow moments but the parts that shined were what stood out to me and I liked those parts. As scarce as they may be, they did help me with finishing the series. But they were scarce in the void of pointless plots and characters.

The one thing I noticed in book 3 and 4 was how this book was trying to be political. It failed on so many levels that I wouldn’t even say this is a politically heavy series. Especially since it doesn’t go into detail about the structure of each country. Given how the structure of the Reds and Silvers are in class, it’s difficult to dismantle such a status quo. There will always be fights among the Reds and Silvers over power. I see no change in this power dynamics. There are two series that are politically heavy and they did a much better job than what King’s Cage and War Storm tried to do. They are the �¾��ԲԱ��’s trilogy by Marie Rutkoski and the Powder Mage trilogy by Brian McClellan. I highly recommend those two if you want a much better political story.

Is this a bad series? No.
Is this a good series? No.
Is this a generic dystopian series? Yes.

My overall experience with the Red Queen series was disappointing. Not a terrible series, but not something to write home about.

Verdict

A disappointing ending to a generic book series. If you liked the Red Queen series, then I'm glad that someone found enjoyment out of it. This series just wasn't for me and I won't be missing it after a few years.

Thanks for reading my review.

-Cesar