Catherine Egan (1)

I received a copy of this book from the publisher via LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program in exchange for an honest review.

Julia Unbound is the third book in The Witch's Child series and I have not yet read the previous two. I've never jumped to a final book in a trilogy before so it was a little bit of an experiment - would I be able to connect to the characters without that backstory? Would I even understand what was going on?

To start off with, the book has a nice map of Spira City, where most of the action takes place, and a cast of characters and places. I love a book with a map. (I probably could even have gone for another map of the greater world, because characters' adventures in far off places are mentioned quite often). I relied on both of those quite often at the beginning to help me understand.

A very simple explanation of the plot is that there are parasites like from Stargate and The Faculty that are controlled by a queen and the main character, Julia, makes a deal to save the life of her brother: she will accept one of these parasites and spy for a world-destroying villain. In addition to this, there's a dying king, a contested crown, burgeoning revolution from multiple sides, persecuted and very angry witches, immortal beings, ancient body swappers, a shadow world, political intrigue, spies, and a dragon. There's honestly so much packed in here I read the entire thing in less than two days because I couldn't stop, I had to find out more.

Julia is a real stand out protagonist. She's strong and vulnerable, brave, upstanding, terrified, everything a teenage girl with an exploitable power to vanish and an immortal bad guy's will-bending parasite making its way slowly to her brain. She tries to do the right thing, while trying to save her free will and her brother's life, but every character has their own machinations and motivations. I even found the min-romance with the cute, pure contender for the crown Luca to be sweet. He's way out of his depth and I was oddly charmed by him, but appreciative that sex and romance were only a very small portion of the story.

I particularly liked Pia, a broken and mechanical assassin controlled by the villain, Casimir; her interactions and growing relationship with Julia were developed really well, each coming to respect and care for each other despite the roles they play at Casimir's will.

So, overall, despite a little confusion at the beginning, Julia Unbound was a fun, compulsive read full of adventure.… (altro)

I distinctly remember enjoying the first book in this series but I struggled to get back into Julia's fictional world. I struggled to recall who many of the supporting characters were and there was not enough recapping to pique my memory. The setting, which is clearly meant to be China before the Boxer uprising, feels fake and forced to me, likely due to unnecessarily specific details which do not serve any purpose but to prove, "Hey, they went somewhere foreign!" Basically, this book needs more story and less scene but I hold out hope for the next book's awesomeness.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher for review.… (altro)

Easily the best new YA fantasy of the year, Ms. Egan presents us with a magic-based reality that echoes 17th century England. Our hero, an orphan with a adopted family of upright if criminal types, takes a job spying in the house of a great lady. Naturally, things are far more complicated that they first seem and our able Julia is suddenly in it up to her neck. A well-drawn cast of characters, constant even pacing, and a plot that, while resolved at the end of the book, is deep enough to sustain a trilogy mark this the beginning of a beautiful reading relationship.

A big thank you to Penguin Random House who were kind enough to send me this ARC. (If you guys could get the second book out asap, I'd really appreciate it.)
… (altro)