[Livro] Glass Sword, de Victoria Aveyard

 Ler em Português      Read in English

Título em Português: --
Série: Red Queen #2
Autor(a): Victoria Aveyard
Editora: Harper Teen
Páginas: 444
Data de Publicação: 9 de Fevereiro 2016

Sinopse:

If there’s one thing Mare Barrow knows, it’s that she’s different.
Mare Barrow’s blood is red—the colour of common folk—but her Silver ability, the power to control lightning, has turned her into a weapon that the royal court tries to control. The crown calls her an impossibility, a fake, but as she makes her escape from Maven, the prince—the friend—who betrayed her, Mare uncovers something startling: she is not the only one of her kind.
Pursued by Maven, now a vindictive king, Mare sets out to find and recruit other Red-and-Silver fighters to join in the struggle against her oppressors. But Mare finds herself on a deadly path, at risk of becoming exactly the kind of monster she is trying to defeat.
Will she shatter under the weight of the lives that are the cost of rebellion? Or have treachery and betrayal hardened her forever? The electrifying next instalment in the Red Queen series escalates the struggle between the growing rebel army and the blood-segregated world they’ve always known—and pits Mare against the darkness that has grown in her soul.

Opinião:
Li este livro no final de Agosto e devo dizer que, um mês depois, mal me lembro da história. Isso não é muito bom, pois não?

Glass Sword é continuação de A Rainha Vermelha e, apesar de ter gostado do primeiro e ter esperanças que este fosse ainda melhor, achei que ficou aquém das expectativas.

Tem bastante acção, sim, mas é diferente do tipo de acção a que temos acesso no primeiro livro. Aqui, são postas em causa lealdades, até daqueles em quem mais confiamos. Gostei da relação que se desenvolveu entre Mare e a sua família, e Mare e Cal, o príncipe prateado – ainda que este desenvolvido não tenha sido exactamente positivo entre as personagens. Apesar disso, Mare não consegue confiar em ninguém, o que acaba por, por vezes, irritar o leitor pois grande parte das vezes é possível, para não dizer fácil, perceber quem está do lado de Mare e quem está contra ela.

O livro acaba por se focar demasiado na Mare e a própria personagem vira-se demasiado sobre si mesma e faz dela própria o centro do mundo, não permitindo interpretações e impedindo o leitor de ver outra maneira (que não a dela) a perspectiva das outras personagens. A maior parte das vezes, Mare age mal e custou-me a perceber os sentimentos dela e a maneira como ela agia com Cal e o que ainda sentia por Maven, mesmo depois de ver o quão odioso e horrível o príncipe Maven era. E Cal acaba, como no livro anterior, por sofrer às mãos de Mare – aliás, todos sofrem às mãos dela, seja pelas suas ideias e pela maneira como ela as executa, seja pelo seu comportamento, que não é dos melhores. Lembro-me de ler uma opinião literária sobre o livro que dizia algo como “ gosto da personagem da Mare exactamente por não gosto dela como pessoa”, parafraseando (e peço desculpa por não por a referência de quem escreveu isto, mas já foi há algum tempo e não me recordo), e é um pouco isso. A personagem está bem-criada e é fiel a si mesma, é coerente, mas só isso é que está a favor dela. Eu, pessoalmente, não gosto dela.

Neste livro temos a apresentação de várias personagens novas, mais vermelhos que, como Mare e o seu irmão, têm poderes. São muitas personagens que aparecem rapidamente e gostaria que elas tivessem sido um pouco mais exploradas individualmente, mas percebo que dentro do período temporal que a autora criou isto pudesse ser um pouco difícil.

Tenho esperanças que o próximo livro seja melhor (a classificação deste livro foi descendo à medida que escreva a crítica e percebia o quão pouco acabei por verdadeiramente gostar deste livro) e, como este acabou num cliffhanger e manteve-me interessada o suficiente na história e algumas personagens, planeio continuar a série. Esperemos que em breve saia em português.

Title: Glass Sword
Serie: Red Queen #2
Author: Victoria Aveyard
Publisher: Harper Teen
Pages: 444
Publication Date: February 9th 2016

Synopsis:

If there’s one thing Mare Barrow knows, it’s that she’s different.
Mare Barrow’s blood is red—the colour of common folk—but her Silver ability, the power to control lightning, has turned her into a weapon that the royal court tries to control. The crown calls her an impossibility, a fake, but as she makes her escape from Maven, the prince—the friend—who betrayed her, Mare uncovers something startling: she is not the only one of her kind.
Pursued by Maven, now a vindictive king, Mare sets out to find and recruit other Red-and-Silver fighters to join in the struggle against her oppressors. But Mare finds herself on a deadly path, at risk of becoming exactly the kind of monster she is trying to defeat.
Will she shatter under the weight of the lives that are the cost of rebellion? Or have treachery and betrayal hardened her forever? The electrifying next instalment in the Red Queen series escalates the struggle between the growing rebel army and the blood-segregated world they’ve always known—and pits Mare against the darkness that has grown in her soul.

Review:
I’ve read this book at the end of August and, a month later, I barely remember the story. That’s not good is it?

Glass Sword is the book that follows Red Queen and, even though I liked the first book and I had hoped that this one would be even better, it stayed below my expectations.

It has a lot of action, yes, but it’s not the same action we saw in the first book. Here, loyalties are questioned at all times, even those that were supposed to be trustworthy. I liked the development between Mare and her family, and Mare and Cal, the silver prince – even though this development wasn’t exactly positive between the characters. Mare cannot trust anyone, and this annoyed me sometimes because most times we could see who she could trust and who she couldn’t, for the most part of the book.

The book focused too much on Mare, and the character becomes the centre of her world and everyone else, because of her behaviour. It prevents the reader to see the other characters’ perspective because everything is twisted to her point of view. For the most part, Mare does only bad decisions and doesn’t act in a good way, especially how she acts with Cal and how she feels about Maven, even though she knows how hideous, ad horrible, and cruel he was. And Cal ends up, as in the first book, being hurt by Mare – actually, everyone suffers because of her, either because of her ideas and how she chooses to execute them, or because of her behaviour, which is definitely not the best one. I remember reading a review for this book that said something like, paraphrasing, “I like Mare’s character because I don’t like Mare as a person” (and I apologise for not referring to the person who wrote it, but I was some time ago and I cannot recall who it was). And it’s a bit like that. The character is true to herself and coherent, but that’s the only thing positive I can say about her – I don’t like Mare.

In this book, we meet some new characters, more Red’s that, like Mare and her brother, have powers. It’s a large number of characters that appear very quickly and I wished that we could have known them a bit better individually, but I understand that within the time frame the author chose, this was a bit difficult.

I’m hoping the next book will be better than this one (the classification has been dropping since the beginning of the review, as I realised how little I actually liked the book), and because this one ended in a cliff-hanger, and there are a few characters I would like to follow, I’ll probably read the rest of the series just to know how it will end. And I hope the Portuguese published publishes the book soon.