Review: Finnikin of the Rock by Melina Marchetta

I had high hopes for this book. I bought the entire series based on the rave reviews I have been seeing everywhere. But unfortunately I was disappointed. 

Beware of minor spoilers below!


I have read some other books by Melina Marchetta, and I generally like her writing style. The story of this sounded great, too. An epic read in a fantasy universe where good battles evil with a little love thrown in for good measure. What's not to like? Well, the story was weirdly paced for me. I remember having read about 1/3 of the book thinking that it was moving quite slow. The objective of the quest (taking back the homeland) is pretty clear from the start, and I figured they would not have time to do it in this book, since it was moving so slowly. But that was okay, since this is a trilogy. Plenty of time to evolve the story. Wrong! After about 2/3 of the book the pacing picked up and before you knew it they were inside the gates! The battle that took place was not really described in great detail, and I feel like it was just a vehicle for the love story, and something to be got over with. 

The characters could have been great, but for some reason I just never really connected with them. Finnikin seemed at once humble and full of himself and Evanjalin seemed like a pushy know-it-all. And why did she need to manipulate everyone constantly? If she had told them of her plans I am sure they would have helped her, but instead she was made to lie all the time and made out to be a misunderstood heroine just trying to do the right thing. 

I never really understood the geography of Lumatere. To be fair, I am a complete spazz at geography so maybe this was just me....but they kept talking about the kingdom walls, and it sounded like it was the wall surrounding the city, but then they would talk about villages and fields within the walls. So did the wall surround the entire Kingdom or what? .......okay, I just looked at the map at the front of the book and now it makes sense....my bad! 

The story had great potential but I feel like it never really lived up to it. There were moments of tragedy in the exile camps, but they were passed over quite quickly and I never really got to feeling anything for the displaced people. It seemed they were just there as a background for Finnikin and Evanjalin to play out their story. And because I felt like I never got to know either of the two protagonists I never really became invested in their love story. And even this love story was very summarily described, which didn't help with feeling us invested in the entire story.

In conclusion I thought this book was okay, but if I hadn't heard all the great reviews and already bought the series, I might have quit about halfway through. As I understand it the second book follows one of the minor characters in the book, so I will continue reading and see if I can care about him and his story.


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