Compass and Blade
Ratings3
Average rating3.2
3.75 or 4
Pros: The Feels; very intriguing love interest #2; found family; interesting magic(?) system; Ocean(!)
Cons: love triangle (ick); i hate one of the MCs/big subplots (in the bad, don't-wanna-read way)
This was bad.
Like, laughably bad.
I'm honestly shocked Compass and Blade is getting rated higher than 3 stars by anyone. The plot of the book itself makes almost no sense. Our main character, Mira, lives on an island where the majority of people make money by wrecking boats. They lure a ship into the rocks, then go out and strip it bare. Then they sell what they find and voila. Not only is this illegal, it's highly dangerous. We find out this is how Mira's mother died very quickly. So with wrecking being illegal, of course someone gets caught doing it and imprisoned. Mira's father, naturally.
SO SHE DECIDES SHE NEEDS TO RESCUE HIM. But instead of making any like...normal, sensible plan she decides she needs to open the super secret chest that her father has kept of her mother's things. When she does so, she finds some coordinates on a journal her mother kept. NOW WHY ON EARTH WOULD THESE COORDINATES HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH HER FATHER BEING IMPRISONED?
IT. MAKES. NO. SENSE.
Of course, the crew she hires to go out to the coordinates is full of secrets. They only have eight days before her father is hanged. Eight. Days. Over the course of these eight days, of course, OF COURSE Mira falls in love with the most mysterious crew member. Because why wouldn't she???? Even though she knows nothing about him, and what he does tell her is quite obviously lies.
This book made me angry. The reveals towards the end are so laughably obvious that it didn't even feel like a reveal. It just felt like WELL, OF COURSE THAT'S WHAT'S HAPPENING NOW. I'm not even going to go into the other mysterious guy with shadow powers that bargains with Mira to rescue her. He's so obviously the true love interest in this series that the author might as well have named him Rhysand.
I regret not DNFing this. I really do.
I'm not sure how you'd fix this other than going back to completely rewrite the book and make it make some sort of sense. Two stars.