Blog Tour: Mary Weber’s Storm Siren

About

In a world at war, a slave girl’s lethal curse could become one kingdom’s weapon of salvation. If the curse – and the girl – can be controlled.

As a slave in the war-weary kingdom of Faelen, seventeen-year-old Nym isn’t merely devoid of rights, her Elemental kind are only born male and always killed at birth – meaning, she shouldn’t even exist.

Standing on the auction block beneath smoke-drenched mountains, Nym faces her fifteenth sell. But when her hood is removed and her storm-summoning killing curse revealed, Nym is snatched up by a court advisor and given a choice: be trained as the weapon Faelen needs to win the war, or be killed.

Choosing the former, Nym is unleashed into a world of politics, bizarre parties, and rumors of an evil more sinister than she’s being prepared to fight . . . not to mention the handsome trainer whose dark secrets lie behind a mysterious ability to calm every lightning strike she summons.

But what if she doesn’t want to be the weapon they’ve all been waiting for?

Set in a beautifully eclectic world of suspicion, super abilities, and monsters, Storm Siren is a story of power. And whoever controls that power will win.

Review

I’d been waiting to read this book from the first time I saw the cover released from Thomas Nelson, mainly because I am a huge fan of sci-fi/fantasy and YA. My thoughts:

What I liked:

The world-building. Weber managed to create a new world that I cared about. I cared about the war that was destroying lives and the people who could maybe save them. I cared about the fact that people were slaves, and some like Nym were really supposed to be dead. And I somehow found myself very invested in the politics going on and whether or not things would work out right.

The characters. Nym manages to become a very likeable and realistic narrator. I understand why she’s frustrated and angry. And for once, I found myself with a heroine who hasn’t set out to make stupid decisions. Also, I really liked the details of how Nym’s slavery has affected her physically, and how being an Elemental means she has white hair. Nym really came alive to me, and was able to drive the book in a way most heroines can’t handle. I thought the secondary characters were really amazing: Eoghan and Colin. They help make Nym who she is. And yet, they both had these interesting and incredible back stories that I just wanted to learn more about. Particularly Eoghan. I wanted more of him.

The romance. I’m so glad that it’s not insta-love and you can see them getting to know each other. I also liked the kind of forbidden aspect of it (not contrived!). It adds some nice tension to the story. I thought everything Weber threw at the couple made sense.

Spiritually, the novel doesn’t touch to much on this topic except to identify a Creator who has created us for a reason, but I’m interested to see where it goes in the next book.

What I didn’t like:

The Ending. Let me just preface this by saying I’ve never had this thought before, but I read the ending, and my first thought was, the publisher gave me the defective copy. For five seconds, I contemplated contacting Thomas Nelson and telling them they gave me the wrong copy, that surely there was another copy out there with a different ending. So….yeah….But. I have hope. I could have read something way wrong. But if I didn’t, there is hope.

Romantic Scale: 8

Overall, a very good fantasy novel. If you follow books like I do, you may be asking yourself, is it worth they hype? So I’m going to be honest with you, this book is good, it’s very good. But I got the feeling that it was almost more world-building and I have a hunch that now that we know the setup, the second book is going to be amazing. It’s engaging and creative, but don’t feel too bad if you think your copy is defective at the end.

*I received this novel from Thomas Nelson. My opinion was not affected in anyway.**