Book Review: The Song Rising

Title: The Song Rising
Author: Samantha Shannon
Rating: 3/5 Stars
Series: The Bone Season (Book 3)

Spoilers for the Divergent Trilogy ahead!!


While this book was slightly more interesting than the previous installment, it didn't really necessarily speak to me or capture my attention or anything like that. I almost felt like the story got stuck in a rut, or like that movie with Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt that I can't remember the name of... (Edge of Tomorrow. It's Edge of Tomorrow. Thanks Google.) You had this really interesting series of events that just kept getting repeated over and over again until, news flash, it wasn't interesting anymore. Plus, as I've mentioned in my past two reviews, my brain is a bag of mush right now so I kept getting confused, like hasn't this happened already...?

I feel like the second half was much more interesting than the first half, but both were pretty repetitive. In the first half it was all "Paige is Underqueen, now here are a million reasons why she might not be Underqueen for very long..." and that just didn't work for me. You can have a protagonist be interesting without constantly reinforcing how hard the journey ahead of her is going to be, her struggles, etc. I understood it the first couple times it was said! And then the second half of the book went all Mission Impossible on me, and if anyone has EVER talked to me about the Mission Impossible movies then they know that I have a grudge against those. A very big one. Also James Bond. Those guys are dead! You can't wack your head against the side of a building that hard and be totally okay afterwards. Sorry. And some of the stuff Paige did reminded me of that. Which made me really mad.

I'm going to be completely honest here--you really gotta know your orders for the last half of this book. And if you have, say, no idea as to what order is what then the whole suspense part of it is ruined because you are too lost to understand what is going on. And that's not kinda-sorta lost, it's majorly lost. And there's a chart and all in the back of the book but flipping back and forth all the time is just a pain. Major pain.

LIKES:
+ Yay for backstories! Nothing makes me happier than secondary character backstories, and you've got that here! Even though I had no clue as to who some of these people were (still iffy on who Tom was. I feel like I should know him and where he was from but again, brain = mush) I still got to learn their stories and that was cool
+ Jaxon backstory and story reveal and HOW DID I NOT SEE THAT COMING?!? Paige is putting it all together and I'm like pshhh how did she not know that and then I'm sitting there like aiflfdujhsf well you didn't either.... (as you can see, did not see that coming. At all. Good job me.
+ Paige is finally using her gift more and although there was still a large amount of can'tdoitcan'tdoit that went on I feel like we actually got to see the dreamwalker, ya know, dreamwalk a decent amount.
+ The fact that she kinda pulled a Tris, but in a good way. You'll see.

DISLIKES:
- You know the outcome of her pulling a Tris, because there are 4 MORE BOOKS in the series.
- There seemed to be a lot of her acting like she was dying/dead but then she's not every time and just repetition...
- See rant about repetition above ^^
- I was really lost at certain points during this story. Like really lost, and I don't think I ever found my way again.

It wasn't awful, I just wasn't in love... I'm not sure if it was the repetition or slow build or what was going on, but it just didn't click for me, which was really disappointing. I still haven't decided if I'm reading the rest of the series when it comes out...

See this review on Goodreads.