by Kelly Braffet
Published on February 11, 2020 by Mira
ISBN: 9780778309406
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 576
Genres: Adult, Fantasy
A penetrating tale of magic, faith and pride...
The Unwilling is the story of Judah, a foundling born with a special gift and raised inside Highfall castle along with Gavin, the son and heir to Lord Elban's vast empire. Judah and Gavin share an unnatural bond that is both the key to her survival... and possibly her undoing.
As Gavin is groomed for his future role, Judah comes to realize that she has no real position within the kingdom, in fact, no hope at all of ever traveling beyond its castle walls. Elban - a lord as mighty as he is cruel - has his own plans for her, for all of them. She is a mere pawn to him, and he will stop at nothing to get what he wants.
But outside the walls, in the starving, desperate city, a magus, a healer with his own secret power unlike anything Highfall has seen in years, is newly arrived from the provinces. He, too, has plans for the empire, and at the heart of those plans lies Judah... The girl who started life with no name and no history will soon uncover more to her story than she ever imagined.
An epic tale of greed and ambition, cruelty and love, this deeply immersive novel is about bowing to traditions and burning them down.
Mini Review
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Some books are lyrical, their stories twisting and weaving an intricate tale that you don’t realize you’re in until it’s too late. The Unwilling wasn’t that sort of book, though at times I think it tried to be (and tried too hard at that). Despite being one of my more anticipated releases for 2020, this book left me sorely disappointed. And before I continue, I do want to mention that there are a number of triggering topics in this book, some of which will be touched on in this review.
The Unwilling takes rambling to a whole new level, featuring nearly 600 pages of a story with little to no direction and several attempts at shocking the reader with harsh scenes. In just the prologue alone we’re introduced to child abuse. I should have listened to the warnings signals going off in my head at this point because it would have saved me from the continuation of graphic abuse depictions, of horrific torture/murder, and more generally a cast of characters that were neither relatable nor redeemable. I’m not someone to shy away from graphic violence or “darker” content in general but this book pushed it too far and for no apparent reason than an attempt to stand out.
Well it succeeded there but not in the good way.
I mean, frankly, The Unwilling put me in such a foul mood after that I didn’t want to pick up another book or do anything but throw it across the room (which I couldn’t because I’d rather not break my Kindle).
And all the nastiness aside, the story just didn’t even make sense? It felt so disjointed and drawn out. Then comes the ending and nothing is resolved and I wasted several hours trudging through the muck to get nowhere. Not even a semblance of satisfaction for the story’s end.
What really sucks is the bad outweighed the good so much that I barely retained anything about the fantasy elements. It’s been a long time since I’ve disliked a book so much (even including books I have DNFed in the last couple years).
I don’t have much more to say about The Unwilling. It was just that bad, and if I could rate this “should have DNFed” I would. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.
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