I love Mindee Arnett’s writing so reading RIVEN was a no brained. However, RIVEN did not live up to her other books. The beginning was super exciting and I was expecting a lot more but as I continued to read, I found myself increasingly confused. There was too much going on and it was unclear if this was the set up for a longer series or just a muddy stand alone.

If there is a sequel, I’d read it and I’d read more of Mindee’s books.

⭐️⭐️⭐️

My Review
My Ranking: 3 stars

The cover of this book is what initially caught my eye. I'm a sucker for YA fantasy books. ** I got an audio copy from Netgalley** The beginning of this book gave me Six of Crow vibes with all the mercenaries and magic. It was slow-paced for the first couple of chapters. The main character the story follows is Mars. Once he starts his mission the pace picks up. I absolutely LOVED Mars. You get to see him grow throughout the entire book. This book has it all, enemies to lovers, betrayal, and magic. While I didn’t LOVE this book I did enjoy it. So I gave it 3 stars. I would stock this in my store.

The book has promise, there are a lot of good potential elements. The biggest hurdle for me as a reader (and I imagine the teens I work with as well) was that the author bombarded me with sociopolitical structure too early in the plot. The author needed to present the characters and make the reader care about them before thrusting complex social and political machinations on the reader.

3.5 ⭐️ the overall story was interesting. I probably will not get any more auto-voice generated audiobooks though as I felt it killed the like-ability of the audiobook. But overall the story was good

An enjoyable read that slowly pulls you into the world by fantastic world building by the author. Would recommend this book to anyone that enjoys world building and plot twists.

I was in chapter 3 and had not retained much of what was going on so far in the story. The synthesized narrator could be part of it, but I have enjoyed other stories narrated that way on Netgalley. Given how long it is, I didn’t think it would interest the average fantasy reader in my library & didn’t want to devote that much time to it after the beginning did not pull me in.

I enjoyed the over all story arch of Riven, the over all plot was exciting and engaging. A young man that has had to fend for himself discovers that there is more than one way to heal yourself and the land. The issue I had with the story was the character development of Mars. His connection to the people around plays a huge part to the subplot but at times that connection wasn’t explicit and left me guessing or wondering how he got to that point. It just felt a bit choppy and missing key elements.

I couldn’t stay focused with this audiobook. There is no emotion or feeling right this narrator which really detracts from the story. I reallllllly tried to stick with this but unfortunately found myself missing too many spots due to the monotonous narration. This book has to be read and not listened too.

3.5 stars
I think this would have been a 4 star if the audiobook narrator had not been a synthesized one. This is 100% my fault because I requested this book before checking to see if it was a synthesized narrator or not. I just CANNOT focus when the narrator is synthesized.
The beginning of this book moved along kind of slowly, but it built up the world and the magic system. I really enjoyed the second half where things get revealed to certain characters and we start getting answers and action.
I liked our main character Mars, he is a secret adept (he is able to channel magic which is rare) and also an assassin. He is trying to get away from this life which is honorable since who really wants to be an assassin, but gets forced back in for one last job by crime boss Una. He has to protect Fura, heiress to Torvald kith and steal something called the Primer. Kicker is, his last job was to kill her father. It was very interesting to see Mars' inner struggle as he gets closer to Fura and tries to deal with the guilt of killing her father. I also really liked Fura. She was very strong and had an amazing relationship with Katryn (not sure about spelling) who I think was kind of her bodyguard but also someone she grew up with.
When the second book comes out, this will be one I look forward to rereading via physical book or audio with an actual narrator.

I personally couldn't get into this one. I'm not sure if it was because of the synthetic voice or just not being interested in the characters. The world building at times didn't make sense to me and so ultimately I had to dnf.