Introduction
Beneath the Citadel,” by Destiny Soria is a fantasy YA novel set in the city of Eldra, where everything is dictated by prophecies that always favor the council that rules the land.
The book opens with the main characters being sentenced to death for trying to sneak into the citadel, and picks up with their escape.
Characters
The main issue I had with the characters was a lack of development because you’re never in one character’s point of view long enough to get to know them. And this combined with a lack of distinctive voices for each character left me confused as to who was who most of the time.
Mostly my impression of them were–Newt is the contortionist with an abusive childhood, Alys is the brains of the operation, Evander is the joker/moral support, Cassa is the hot-head impulsive one, and Vesper is just a plot device so that the ending works out the way it did.
This wouldn’t have been so bad if we stuck with one character throughout the story, but no less than six characters get point of view chapters, and in each of them few if any new information or details are revealed, while the same information gets covered ad nauseum.
If the events being covered were more interesting, this wouldn’t have been an issue.
Overall, this would have been a far more enjoying book had Ms. Soria either limited the point of view characters or told the story from an omniscient point of view so there was no need to retread the same information.
Plot
The story itself sounded interesting, but it lacked in the execution. Because of the issues with point of view characters that I mentioned above, any momentum the story builds is wasted by the often-pointless shifts in the point of view character. That is, when we’re not forced to slog through chapter-long flashbacks of details that should have been incorporated within the story proper.
Moreover, for a story that bills itself as a fantasy, the world building was threadbare with concepts and terms thrown at you with few explanations until later in the book.
Moreover, it is yet another book set in pseudo medieval
Europe. Seriously, give this a rest. There are so many other places you could
set a fantasy.
The other issue I had with the plot was that it started on
such a bang and then was uneven as hell. Things would happen and then because
of the flashback chapters everything slowed to a crawl and didn’t pick up for
several more chapters.
By the end of the book, I just didn’t care about the characters.
Conclusion
Overall, I give “Beneath the citadel” three out of
five stars. It’s not the best book, but I’ve read worse. Check this out at your
library if you insist on reading it.
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