For She Is Wrath

This was good! I always love a revenge tale so that had a point from me from the get-go, but this was a fast and cutting read. Varga really throws you into the thick of it and sweeps you along for the ride pretty much immediately and all you can do is hang on. Noor and Dania's friendship was lovely and arguably the primary relationship of the book; it was nice to see that a relationship built on something like revenge still endured when they were past all of that and didn't have it tying them together anymore.

However, I feel like this book was just generally...lacking? For lack of a better word. I wish had spent more time establishing the world, more time learning about the country and empire were in, more time learning about the djinn magic, just...MORE. This book was pretty much entirely plot-focused and the wider worldbuilding suffered for it. It left me with a lot of questions for everything outside of the plot and even some inside of it.

For example: WHY didn't they kill the emperor? I get that the whole message is supposed to be ‘revenge is a cycle and we need to break it by walking away' but like. He is still a threat even though you took away his djinn power? Like yes eventually the common folk who he's been starving and killing would find out that he was powerless and overthrow him but he still has time to do some damage. Even putting aside personal revenge, he's still a corrupt ruler! Get rid of him so he can't hurt anyone! And this ties in with ‘leaving me with more questions' because what happened to him in the epilogue? He's obviously not involved in the ruling of the empire anymore but where did he go? And how did Anam and Maz get to be on the assumed ruling council? A little frustrating to just leave it at that.

This wasn't a bad book, but I feel like we were missing too much to make it a truly good one.

C.A.P.E Rating:Characters - 4/5
Atmosphere - 3/5
Plot - 3/5
Enjoyment - 3/5