Review | Lore by Alexandra Bracken

Title: Lore
Author: Alexandra Bracken
Rating: ★☆☆☆☆(1.5 Stars)
Publisher: Disney Hyperion
Release Date: January 5, 2021

“Fear is a foreign land I shall never visit and a language that will never cross my tongue.”

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I’m going to be very honest with you – I did not enjoy this or have a fun time reading it. I’m actually glad it’s finally over because it was dragging and felt like it was taking forever to read. But I can’t really say I’m disappointed either, because I didn’t have that high of expectations going in. Which is a travesty because I should love this because I live for Greek mythology, urban fantasy, and modernized retellings of all kinds.

But I found the world building to be lacking – there’s supposed to be this long and rich history of the different Houses and the Agon battle, but I was not invested (or interested) at all. We get told about feuds and allies between different houses, but they’re given no weight because we’re only told how to feel – not shown anything. The beginning was so muddled that I had no clue what was happening and it felt like some important details were glossed over, so that made it hard for me to know what was important to the story. The story was entirely too long for how little actually happened and the action wasn’t compelling enough to keep the pace moving quickly. I didn’t care about any of the relationships – I didn’t feel for them at all, they were just there and felt underdeveloped, even though we did get a few flashbacks, it wasn’t enough. I didn’t care if they made it out of any of the dangerous situations they were in.

I’m just happy that I’m finished and I can try and read something I’ll actually like to make sure I don’t go into a reading slump at the beginning of the year. I think this puts Alexandra Bracken in the not for me column for future releases, but I hope others can get through this and find a new book they enjoy, but it was not for me.