Beth's Reviews > The Bridge Kingdom

I can't. Even audio couldn't make it halfway entertaining, and that is depressing as hell. I think if it had leaned into being trash, rather than taking itself way too seriously, it would have been fun. As is, every paragraph drained my energy meter.

(full review below.)

***

When I buy a book, I expect to like it. So when a book I expect to like is a flop, a dud, a turkey, a stinker, some other slang from well over a century ago, I feel sad.

Let's shake off those blues and smile! My light novel title for this book will be:

The Incompetent Assassin and the Pushover Prince

Lara from Maridrina is one of a dozen princesses who were trained from a very young age to be spies and assassins in service to their father. A chosen girl will infiltrate Ithicana--the titular Bridge Kingdom--under the guise of a political marriage to Aren, its ruler. Lara proves her worth as the chosen fiancée by poisoning her sisters at a dinner, making her the only remaining viable candidate, even though she isn't the most beautiful* or intelligent** one.

* she's a perfect Aryan specimen
** she's a total doofus

Some elements of the worldbuilding were quite cool. I signed up for Danielle Jensen's read-along emails for this book, and learning about the "sea of stars" phenomenon, and the beautiful areas of the Philippines that she based much of Ithicana on through those mails was quite cool. The descriptions of jungle and cove were the most vivid in the book.

Unfortunately, the Bridge itself made no sense to me. It's basically a 200-mile-long tunnel made of concrete, supported by natural pillars of rock, with only one major egress on either side. Although it's 10 days' walk from end to end, it seems like anyone can get anywhere along its length in a matter of hours depending on plot exigency. It's both a major thoroughfare for trade, and a passageway for Ithicanian soldiers to quickly make their way between various secret entries/exits along the route.

Putting commercial traffic and super-secret traffic along the same thoroughfare seems like a Bad Idea. There's at least one scene where the Ithacanians need to get where they're going by sea because there's a group of merchants camping right next to one of the secret exits. I'm honestly surprised that these exits have been kept secrets for however long. Surely Lara wouldn't be the first spy that the place ever saw? Considering how beleaguered it is by the various countries who want to conquer it, that seems absolutely impossible. Not to mention that all of Aren's guards know these secrets. No need to seduce the ruler when there are a dozen immediate retainers to hand who have the same information.

Let's get into our light novel title now:

First, there's Lara, whose appearance is fairly standard blond-haired, blue-eyed, curves in all the right places, zzz. That first scene where she gains her place as Ithicana's princess-bride is quite striking, but it's all downhill from there. She has to be the most incompetent spy ever created. She's constantly just doing whatever and nearly getting caught, and is often hauled out of the fire by coincidence, most often by Aren's being called on to deal with an attack on the islands.

She's supposedly been brainwashed to prioritize "her people" above all, and to be completely ruthless when it comes to her mission. (As a side note, I got so tired of "her people" or "his people" coming up again and again, like the reader wouldn't believe it as a motivation for either Lara or Aren if it wasn't hammered home at least a couple times per page.) But it takes about forty seconds for her to be all hot and bothered over Aren, who supposedly is Maridrina's greatest threat. Maybe a little fear and terror on her part would have made her arc more convincing, or something other than horniness and the worst spycraft ever seen in fiction.

I'd have been more convinced of Lara's ruthlessness if Aren himself weren't the squishiest marshmallow that ever marshmallowed, making ruthlessness completely unnecessary. He's been king of Ithicana for a year, and aside from showing not the slightest reluctance to murder Ithicana's attackers by the hundreds, I really do wonder how he's kept his place as king, or that the Bridge hasn't been infiltrated and overrun well before now.

Here's one example of Aren as a pushover: Aren and a few of his guards are taking Lara to meet (and be intimidated by) Aren's grandmother a few Bridge stops away from Midguard, Aren's HQ. They've blindfolded Lara so she can't trace their route or learn more about the Bridge's workings. Horns sound, signaling an attack on one of Ithicana's towns. Aren and co. need to drop Lara off with Nana posthaste and rush to the defense, so they remove her blindfold so the group can move quickly.

Supposedly they can't leave her with a guard or two, still blindfolded, because they need every single person to man the defenses. First of all, if your human resources are spread so thin you can't spare a couple guys to watch after your hostage who might also be a spy, your country's in trouble. Secondly, this seems to indicate a hardline approach to secrecy that's about as sturdy as a house of cards.

We can assume that our FL and ML are horny for each other from the jump, because this is a romantasy. There's a mildly spicy scene early on in the book when Lara makes one of her several failed attempts to snoop around in Aren's stronghold, but other than that, there isn't a lot for a reader to work with. I was convinced they'd want to get into bed together, but unconvinced they could form a love relationship from the limited foundations we were given. Moving on.

The worst part of reading (or trying to read) this book is how excruciatingly slow it is. The initial setup was quite cool, and I anticipated a suspenseful and romantic read. What I got was what felt like a story with three well-established scenes, and the rest random bullshit: very little actual content, and a lot of obvious filler. The middle of this book--which wasn't all that long to begin with--sagged. At times it felt like it took an hour and a half to read 1% of the book. I even tried to read in it in audio, and it didn't help. My attention wandered again and again as the near-identical set pieces droned on.

My impression is of an author who has a good number of novels under their belt, and has confidence in setting characters and situations up and resolving them neatly, but who didn't leave enough room for their imagination to inspire and surprise them. Aside from the setting elements mentioned earlier, there was nothing there to hold my interest.

Books like this are more depressing than anything else. I had to quit at about 80% of The Bridge Kingdom because I could feel a slump coming. "Why read at all, when all books are dreary and boring, just like this one?" Of course that isn't true, and I had to escape before it managed to convince me of that for another month.