Review: Cursebreakers

 


Okay, so first and foremost I would really like to see some reviews by people with bipolar disorder, because I do not feel qualified to dissect that element of the representation. In a few ways the way mental health in general was treated and discussed in the world rubbed me the wrong way – especially the way Adrien talked about Gennady on occasion – but again, I don’t think I have the right perspective to understand or talk about it in a nuanced way. With that out of the way, this book was a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand, I found the pacing frustrating – it didn’t really feel like anything happened for the first hundred pages. There was nothing terribly special about the writing either; I didn’t feel overly interested in the characters or the world. And the worldbuilding was a bit off. A lot of terms were thrown around with no real context or explanation, and there didn’t seem to be very consistent rules for where a lot of it was coming from. Similarly, the magic system was very arbitrary. On the other hand, there was certainly a lot of potential in both the world and the characters, and once in a while it was touched on, especially in Adrien and Gennady’s relationship. And I did find the obstacle that Adrien’s mental health struggles posed really interesting – it’s fairly unusual to see the interaction between something like bipolar disorder and a fantasy world conspiracy. So overall, plenty of potential, but it was just missing something for me.

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