written by
Shannon Messenger
rated
3 / 10
genre
Fantasy
best for ages
9+
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The first glance at this series is captivating and promising. Many characters span across the books in all sorts of colors and poses, all of them in action. It looks like an exciting read to explore. But as the saying goes, don’t judge a book by its cover. This is no exception. Despite the alluring and brilliant covers and the promises that the blurbs and concepts made, the content and execution inside is immensely disappointing and ridiculous. Now, I have so much to rant about this that I’m going to format it a little different than I usually do; I’ll have sections in bold.
Repetitive and Unnecessary Plot
Where to start? One of the most prominent weaknesses of KotLC is the plot. At first, it was decent for the first one or two books. Unlike many others I know, I enjoyed the second book, Exile, the most. Now, I read this a while ago, but I remember it being action-packed, well-paced, and emotional. Most significantly, the first few books are relatively short; yet even then, they were around five hundred pages each. However, as the series carries on and on, the books continue to get thicker and thicker. The first book has a reasonable 488 pages. But by the time it gets to Neverseen and Lodestar, it’s at 688, a 200-page growth. And finally, the longest book, Flashback, has a whopping 848 pages.
So what’s behind all this page increase? Exciting plot? Developing characters? Nope. Instead, it’s just repetitive, book after book. By the time of the fourth or fifth book (there are ten in total, ten!), it has become increasingly evident. At that point, I’d just be brute forcing myself to read through the book and come out of it thinking, “What? Nothing even happened!” Every single book, the plot is the same; I can literally predict what’ll happen at the end. Sophie’s always the one Try to guess the Neverseen’s plan. Fail. Repeat. The rest of it is just fluff. What’s funny is that Messenger originally planned for this series to be a trilogy. It’s now over three times as long; that’s how much it’s been stretched unnecessarily. So eventually, I gave up hope on reading this series, and dumped it. But I write this as a person who has read every single book except for Stellarlune, so I still know too much to just ignore this series like I wish to.
Horribly Written Love Triangle
What’s more infuriating is the terrible romance. In the beginning, it was decent. Dex and Fitz seemed to be the biggest contenders, and I loved Dex and his personality. Unfortunately, as the series progressed, Keefe was brought into the mix. At first, before the romance, I liked him: a quirky, hilarious boy who loves to crack jokes. But that’s literally it. The entirety of Keefe in the ten books is either making funny remarks or being depressed and throwing tantrums like a child. He reminds me of James Potter and Sirius Black from Harry Potter, but extremely messed up. Padfoot and Prongs are funny, of course, but they’ve got their own quirks. James is arrogant on the outside but inwardly would do anything to protect and help his friends. Sirius is reckless, bold, and charming, but with his own traumatic experiences that balances perfectly with his personality. Keefe? He’s funny, he smirks, and he has an evil mom. He’s addicted to running away from home like a baby, which he does twice (if I recall correctly). Twice. He really doesn’t develop at all. That pretty much sums up his entire personality, and it adds to the fact that the plot is repetitive and has no creativity whatsoever. He seems to have no other traits except for that, and his obsession with Sophie Elizabeth Foster. That applies to Fitz as well: his personality is forever the hot popular boy who comes from a royal, high-class family and has anger issues. His character isn’t even lovable; instead, he’s just straight-up annoying. Oh, and his obsession with Sophie Elizabeth Foster. He doesn’t talk to anybody except for her, his family, and Keefe (with whom he argues irritatingly). Even my beloved Dex was ruined by the romance. Why did he, too, have to be so obsessed over Sophie? Biana exists. Linh. Marella. All are likely better characters and people than Sophie. It could’ve been fine, though, if Messenger had kept him consistent. In the first book, he seemed pretty important. But after Sophie rejected him? He became one of those seldom mentioned “main” characters who did basically nothing, because he didn’t contribute to the romance. What happened to that beautiful, smart boy?
In general, the romance in KotLC was a horror to witness. It was a sappy mess, and ruined Fitz, Keefe, Dex, and Sophie as characters. But let’s focus on Sophie herself here. Even if we just talk about romance, Sophie’s personality and choices make zero sense. She seems to be such a brilliant, strong-willed person. She fights against the Neverseen, is the main contributor to all their achievements, but when it comes to romance, she’s clueless. But that’s not important. What was most appalling to me was her decision to have a foot in both camps. That’s the potential of a cheater. She can’t choose between Keefe and Fitz for the life of her, which has caused the two boys’ friendship, once so close, to crumble. The fanbase of KotLC is also largely divided, one group consisting of Sokeefe shippers and one Fitzphie. Why cause all this division? Simply because Messenger can’t seem to decide between the two, and also because the war between her fans propels the popularity of KotLC. If she had Sophie choose Keefe or Fitz permanently, half her entire fandom would likely turn against her. The story is now too deep in to change that. So why write it in the first place? I’m not saying there can’t be a love triangle; in fact, I love them. But why is it the center of all plot? Why was it dragged on for so long and so unnecessarily? I don’t think Messenger even wants to put an end to it.
The Perfect Girl
But even if you put the romance aside, Sophie is not at all a well-crafted character. What a Mary Sue she is. Every single damn thing in the series revolves around her to the point where she is no longer a realistic character. She’s this stunning, magical, intelligent person that is even more special and brilliant than all the special and brilliant elves we see in the story. Oh, did I mention that she’s a telepath and has a photographic memory? And that she’s a high schooler who’s been accepted into Yale? And that she’s hot and pretty, and nice and sweet? Messenger gives her no flaws – except for the ones that are hidden underneath, the ones that make her an even more disgusting character after the over-perfection of her “personality”. She’s a selfish hypocrite underneath. Everybody loves her just so dearly that they’d rush to her aid at the slightest cut. But she would never return it back, for she’s self-centered and assumes that everything is about her after being doted on by every single person. She complains to her “friends” about being left in the dark on info, but a second later she does the same to them. The reason I put quotation marks around friends is because she doesn’t care about them. She only cares about herself, Keefe, and occasionally Fitz, but neglects everyone else. Oh, someone got kidnapped? She’s finally starts freaking out – over her matchmaking situation. And even to her two boyfriends, she’s toxic, yet neither of them finally come to their senses and realize it like a realistic person would. She fails again and again against the Neverseen, but for some absolutely stupid reason, nobody blames her and instead continue to spoil her. So she never changes. She remains Sophie, the special snowflake who can do no wrong.
Character Development
Speaking of Sophie and her unchangeable character, let’s talk about the other characters some more. Now, the title here is misleading. There is no character development whatsoever in KotLC, except for Bronte (which is why he’s my favorite character, by the way) and maybe Keefe. Messenger probably realized that, so she tried to force some development onto them. It only made it worse. There are so many examples of this (Sophie is one of the most prominent, of course), but if I said too much, I’d be spoiling a lot. But in general, a lot of characters just jump straight from one characteristic, such as hating Sophie, straight to another, such as loving Sophie, with a feeble explanation behind it, or none at all. You call that development?
So Many People
Not only is there no character development in this series, there’s also too many characters. Of course, the protagonist going solo is also boring a lot of the time. But nine? Nine main characters? That’s way too many to keep track off and way more than necessary. I’d say six at most, but Harry Potter only has three. Now, the first book of Lord of the Rings, another one of my favorite series, has nine as well, but it focuses primarily on them and their journey. It isn’t hard to count them all, and they each have their own distinctive personalities that are easy to recall. KotLC, on the other hand? It’s like Messenger started out with just a handful of characters, and then ran out of things to write about them because she doesn’t know how to develop them and stretched out their story too much, so she adds in some more to fill it up. And then there’s the less main but also major characters, such as Stina, members of the Black Swan, and all the bodyguards the elves have. I don’t know why there had to be so many characters. A whole bunch of them weren’t necessary, or at least Messenger could have made some of the main characters less important instead of trying to balance all nine of them.
Back From the Dead
In many books, there is death. Harry Potter. Lord of the Rings. Without some sort of tragedy that invokes sentimentality or sadness, books often are dull and emotionless no matter how desperate the author try to make it sound.
Messenger did try to write of death. I won’t get into details and spoilers here, but she killed off many characters that were pretty close to my heart. I was devastated, but what is a good book without it? I don’t like my favorites dying, but sometimes it’s necessary and also beautiful. However, in KotLC, ninety percent of the characters that do die come back to life, one way or another. They’ve got an identical twin, they actually weren’t dead, etc. It’s like Messenger can’t bear to kill them off herself, so she just abandons the plan. Eventually, there aren’t any major deaths that readers really care about anymore. Thus, the story is even blander.
Unreasonably Large Fanbase
Now, I get why some people would like KotLC. It’s a quick, easy read and it has a lot of romantic drama, no matter how unnecessary and boring. You don’t have to think when you read it.
But this popular? It’s not the hottest series out there, but for such a renowned series, this was extremely disappointing. I see a lot of people carrying these books around, and I know a lot of people who have read them. But I don’t quite understand why it has such a large fanbase when far better fantasy series exist, such as The Darkening and Shadow and Bone, both of which are not as well-known as KotLC, I believe. How did this series become so popular in the first place? Simply because it was so “exciting” despite the ridiculous plot and characters?
I don’t know what happened. This series had so much potential, and the concepts it offered were quite alluring to me. But it’s become a huge mess, and I doubt there’s anything Messenger – or anyone else – can do to save it now.
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