Review - Ward Against Death (Chronicles of a Reluctant Necromancer #1) by Melanie Card

Image and blurb from Goodreads

Title: Ward Against Death
(Chronicles of a Reluctant Necromancer #1)

Author: Melanie Card

Release Date: August 2nd, 2011

Age Category/ Genre: Young Adult Paranormal

Publisher: Entangled (Teen)

Twenty-year-old Ward de’Ath expected this to be a simple job—bring a nobleman’s daughter back from the dead for fifteen minutes, let her family say good-bye, and launch his fledgling career as a necromancer. Goddess knows he can’t be a surgeon—the Quayestri already branded him a criminal for trying—so bringing people back from the dead it is.

But when Ward wakes the beautiful Celia Carlyle, he gets more than he bargained for. Insistent that she’s been murdered, Celia begs Ward to keep her alive and help her find justice. By the time she drags him out her bedroom window and into the sewers, Ward can’t bring himself to break his damned physician’s Oath and desert her.

However, nothing is as it seems—including Celia. One second, she’s treating Ward like sewage, the next she’s kissing him. And for a nobleman’s daughter, she sure has a lot of enemies. If he could just convince his heart to give up on the infuriating beauty, he might get out of this alive…

Goodreads

Buy Links: Amazon 

2.5 “Necromancer & Assassins” Stars

ARC via NetGalley

Thank you, Entangled Teen.

I’m gonna keep this short because I’m guessing this is a serious case of “it isn’t you, it’s me”.

I tried to like this book. I really did, but something simply didn’t work for me, and when I say something, I mean… this weird thing that probably has everything to do with subjectivity.

Look, this is a book with an assassin as the main character. A teen girl assassin. You see where I’m going there, right? This should be enough to make me super interested, and for a little while I was, but then the story simply lost me. Add the fact that the other main character is a sweet guy with the power to bring the dead back and I should’ve devoured this, right? The worse thing is I can’t name a specific thing that happened that made me lose interest. I’m guessing it was more of a case of the story never really hooking me enough from the very start.

I partially blame this on the third person narrative. Sure I read a lot of 3^rd POV books, especially since I’m such a huge fan of contemporary romance, but here it simply didn’t work for me. The voices were not strong enough to hook me.

This is where the generic “I didn’t connect with the characters” enter, I have to say. There wasn’t a specific problem with the character or the plot, but I simply didn’t connect with them enough. They didn’t move me, they didn’t make me root for them or ship them. I thought Ward’s infatuation with Celia was sort of cute, but that was about it. There was no obsessing over whether they’d be together or not, which is a bad sign when it comes to a romance plot or subplot where I’m concerned. I’m not even ashamed to admit this. LOL.

If the romance didn’t hook me, then I expected the plot to do that. I wanted to be interested in Ward’s role as a necromancer, or Celia’s assassin history, or even curious about the circumstances of her death and who was responsible for that, but it never happened. The feeling never came to me.

Judging from all the great reviews on Goodreads, this shouldn’t have happened at all, but here we are…

Look, sometimes this weird thing where a book doesn’t speak to you and you can’t figure out why happens, and it did with me and Ward Against Death. I wish it had been different, though, and I hope whoever is reading this next has a much better experience than I did.

 

*If you liked this review (or not), if you read the book (or not), come say hello and leave your comments bellow.