Name: Glass Sword
Series: Red Queen #2
Author: Victoria Aveyard
Publisher: Orion
Format: Kindle (through Kindle Unlimited)
Genres: Young Adult, Fantasy, Dystopia, Romance
Noted Tropes: Big Brother is Watching, Cliffhanger, Discovery of New Powers, The Other Man
Steam or Spice: None
Rating:
Synopsis: Goodreads
If there’s one thing Mare Barrow knows, it’s that she’s different.
Mare Barrow’s blood is red—the color of common folk—but her Silver ability, the power to control lightning, has turned her into a weapon that the royal court tries to control.
The crown calls her an impossibility, a fake, but as she makes her escape from Maven, the prince—the friend—who betrayed her, Mare uncovers something she is not the only one of her kind.
Pursued by Maven, now a vindictive king, Mare sets out to find and recruit other Red-and-Silver fighters to join in the struggle against her oppressors.
But Mare finds herself on a deadly path, at risk of becoming exactly the kind of monster she is trying to defeat.
Will she shatter under the weight of the lives that are the cost of rebellion? Or have treachery and betrayal hardened her forever?
The electrifying next installment in the Red Queen series escalates the struggle between the growing rebel army and the blood-segregated world they’ve always known—and pits Mare against the darkness that has grown in her soul.?
Review:
Glass Sword is book #2 in the Red Queen series, and so there may be spoilers for Red Queen below.
What was that?! Miss Aveyard, we need to talk because you somehow set out the plan for the book and I was on board with it, I understood where we were going and then you threw this plan away and took me down an alternate path that we were not going down!! I should have been prepared for it, but I wasn’t because I thought for certain there was no way…
If you can’t tell, Glass Sword has left me on a cliffhanger. I am fortunate that I am able to read the next in the series pretty quickly. I would not be impressed if I was having to wait for a release date to find out the consequences of this one! The final chapter still gives me chills! I’m writing this a couple days after I finished the book, and still that one line gives me chills. Once you read it, I’m sure you’ll know what I am referring to.
Mare and Cal are fully flung into the rebellion in Glass Sword following the events of Red Queen when the Queen is able to use her abilities to have Cal kill his own father – brutally. Cal is wanted for treason and murder, and everyone believes Mare is a seductress stringing the Prince’ along, and a danger. It’s not pretty for them, and Glass Sword steps up the rebellion aspect of this novel.
For me, Mare is slightly less likeable in Glass Sword, and I don’t know if this is because power and responsibility getting the better of her, or something else, but even I can admit that she has a really tough time with it in Glass Sword. Being the face of a rebellion, if dystopian’s have taught us anything, comes with challenges that none of us would want to face!
Whilst I have reservations about Mare, I do love Cal. I understand Cal’s troubles in Glass Sword and I get why he’s struggling. I just love him, and I am keeping all my fingers crossed that he makes it out the other side of this series because I feel like he deserves to! In addition to me loving Cal, our secondary cast of characters grow bigger, and I certainly found myself attached to more than one of the new members. Not only new members, but old ones! Gisa is back and as sweet as she was in Red Queen – and a few other old faces. And together, they’re trying to take down Maven…
Maven, is a piece of work… I hate that I liked him in the first book. I liked him enough that despite the ending, I was still hoping it would be revealed that actually he was being used by his Mother, just as Cal was used by her. But as it turns out, it wasn’t enough, us disliking Maven and Queen Elara, we had to be given another somebody who is questionable at best. We have The Colonel (SP). I am not his fan, and after having finished Glass Sword I am still convinced I am right about him… I love it when authors have me doubting even my own opinions (good or bad) of someone they’ve created! If morally ambiguous / questionable is her goal, then she’s damn good at writing it.
I really enjoyed Glass Sword, we learn more about those like Mare and Shade (newbloods!) and honestly some of them have cool powers, whilst some are just straight terrifying. I do wonder how Aveyard plans to handle the new bloods in the series to come – some of them do kind of feel like the time turner situation from Harry Potter – once you introduce something so strong how do you explain away that being the answer to everything?
Spoiler-y information about some of the powers
Some of the newbloods have powers that are just better versions of Silver powers, like Nix who is essentially indestructable, or Ketha who can explode things without having to touch them. But then there are some who just have crazy powers that are downright terrifying. Luther? Hello! I don’t care that he’s a child. I am sure he will end up clutching something for us at some point.
On top of that, the romance really took a step back in Glass Sword. Hints are still made, but really it’s all but gone and I am left wondering how will this series ever be considered a romance again? Time till tell! As Mare battles Maven’s actions she’s still left with glimmers of hope for the boy she was betrothed to once upon a time. And then there is Cal! The exiled Prince with whom she was leading on / falling for in book one? Who knows where her heart lies because after reading Glass Sword, I’m surprisingly none the wiser.
I’m aware that the thing I want to talk most about is absolutely a massive spoiler, and even my spoiler tagging won’t do, and so to reduce the risk of talking about it here where I shouldn’t, I should start reading King’s Cage. But something tells me, a storm is coming…
“No one is born a monster. But I wish some people were. It would make it easier to hate them, to kill them, to forget their dead faces.”
Reading With Tyler 
Leave a reply to Review: War Storm by Victoria Aveyard – Reading With Tyler Cancel reply