I love a fantasy that has some kind of focus on royalty and this one did not disappoint. I found that aspect of the book particularly interesting, as well as the relationship between mother and daughter.

Is this a weird YA fantasy or satire?

The writing was really good. The voice was on-point for a YA fantasy.

The story though, not my cup of tea.

It seems this book still hasn't been published although the official pub date was 08 Oct 2020.

Thank you NetGalley for a copy of this book in return for an honest review. This was a good book and had great chapter titles. I was left with some questions, but as this is the first book in the series, I'm sure those questions will be answered in future books.

This book got archived before I could download it, so I got it on kindle unlimited.

The prologue and the blurb of this book promised so much more and different than what we end up receiving.

The story had no flow, the worldbuilding was non-existent and frankly most of the time .I had a hard time following what was happaning with all the jumps from scene to scene.
The characters lacked personality and I had a hard time relating or rooting for anyone.

The chapter titles were so creative though, I just loved the concept but I kind of feel that the book needs so much editing that the chapter titles stole the show.

Also for me it is a major trigger when a girl says she isn't like other girls.

Sadly the book had so many issues that I gave up on it at the 30-40% mark.

I want to thank NetGalley, the publisher and the author for giving me the opportunity to review this book. I admit in my joy at joining NetGalley I may have been overzealous in my requesting numbers. As this book has already been published, I am choosing to work on the current upcoming publish date books in my que. As I complete those I will work on my backlogged request and will provide a review at that time. I again send my sincere thanks and apologies.

I had my eye on this book for a while. The plot was face paced and the characters are interesting. It kept me turning the page and wondering what was going to happen next.

The story lacks any clear direction, which made this book really underwhelming. Kilco is just rude without a reason. I knew it was doomed the second Kilco said she wasn't like the other girls.

The book started out promising enough. I loved the cover; the description sounded interesting and once I started reading the prologue I thought, hey, this book is great and promising!
And then came the first chapter... First things first - I like a book that challanges its readers. I love good word building, little hints and clues to be picked up throughout the book and to follow, which keep the writing fresh and entertaining and challange the reader. I also love chapter titles - especially if they actually have a meaning to the chapter and using different phobias as chapter titles is so brilliant that I simply have to give this book a star for that idea alone.
But sadly, it's not going to be more than two stars for this book. Everything that was interested about this book it ruined by its absolutly ridiculous, inconsistent jumps in scenery. There was almost no coherence after the prologue and I read a book that used to do those untimely jumps before and I did not like it. It's a shame really because I think this book has high potential, but if I am unable to follow the scenery, what's the point of reading the book?
I am still rating this book two stars, though. One star for the chapter titles and their creative use and one for the prologue. The prologue made Kira my favourite character and I was really looking forward to this book. But the style this book is written in is simply not for me. It's tiresome and I don't want to read a book that exhausts me.

I received a free ARC by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Actual Rating 1.5 stars
I found this book to have little to no word building. The story lacked structure and was difficult to follow. The author never really gave much info and I found myself not caring what happened to the characters.

The book I was expecting from the synopsis is not the one I got. This book is in serious need of some editing. There were words misplaced, spelling errors and the story jumped around a lot. I felt like there was no clear separation of scenes and at times I felt like I had missed out on large chunks of story as the story jumped ahead without explanation.

I will definitely not be following up with this series as I found it dull, poorly executed and uninspired. On a positive note I found the cover to be beautiful.

This is the first book of the series, and it packs quite a lot in!

Our female character is Kilco Escamilla, a young, but terrifying woman, who is taking after her mother, Kira, to become a doctor. Called by royalty to leave their home, they travel to the neighbouring kingdom to become the Royal Physician. As they are at war though, things aren’t as easy as they may seem.

Kilco meets both The Shield, and Ilya, an assassin. Both of these relationships develop into friendships, and get really quite complicated, as does the situations they find themselves in.

It’s a very complex book emotionally, it’s very fast paced, and it left me quite exhausted emotionally sometimes!

I thought it ended quite abruptly (for me anyway), but it is the first book so that’s ok, I imagine the next one will more or less follow straight on.

My thanks to Netgalley and Andraharts Publications, LLC for the copy

Remnants of Atonement
GP McKenna

One of the most annoying things about YA fantasy is that its teenage heroes often seem like tiny, serious adults in disguise. They’re preternaturally mature orphans who end up saving the world, usually with grave mien and occasionally with extraordinary fighting talent. They parent themselves with grace, and their teenage crushes turn into their lifelong soulmates.

And then there’s Kilco.

Within the first few chapters of “Remnants of Atonement”, Kilco establishes herself as an insufferable, offensive, sarcastic, self-absorbed brat. In other words, a teenager. Forget saving the world, Kilco can barely be trusted to show up for the afternoon shift at the hospital where she works as an assistant to her mother, the indomitable Kira Escamilla, a physician whose bedside manner is only steps above that of Dr. Gregory House.

The story begins when Kira and Kilco decamp for the front to assist the Princess of neighboring Ascot in her rebellion against a usurper. Whatever. The novel pays about as much attention to politics as the average teenager would. Instead, Kilco ditches her duties to stumble into the tent of Pogue, a brawny teenaged warrior with “cheekbones that defied gravity.” Seriously, he’s basically Brad Pitt in “Troy.” Pogue is that blue-eyed boy whom everyone loves – the world is just nicer to him, Kilco realizes – which makes him attractive enough to Kilco that it’s worth restricting herself to the “simple language” that Pogue best understands. He isn’t stupid, exactly, but “once you hit four syllables, you might as well start speaking in the old tongue.” Still, he’s got a heart of gold his iron muscles. No one’s perfect, right?

Enter Pogue’s bff, fighting companion, and foil, Ilya. A self-described “virgin who can read”, the 15-year-old scarlet-eyed assassin from a clan known as the Ilvarjo is every manga-loving girl’s imaginary boyfriend. He’s slim and pale and graceful and shy and we’re just waiting for him to love us. Unfortunately, in a twist of fate that the aforementioned teenage girls will entirely understand, it turns out Ilya and Pogue like each other a lot more than they like Kilco. (She does spend the entire novel stumbling about in the same blood, gore and guts-soaked dress.) Still, in the words of Never Have I Ever, another teen rom-com, it’s less of a love triangle and more of “a line and a dot.”

Because the term “third wheel” doesn’t exist in this universe, Kilco tags along on Ilya and Pogue’s dates until they eventually accept her as a friend. Tragedy, hijinks, a relatably terrible sex scene and undignified barfing ensue, but the heart of this story is the fun, sweet, fond relationship between the three main characters who are doing a pretty shit job of everything except for caring about each other. And even that is not their forte.

Yes, Kilco’s a nightmare, but she’s funny as hell: “violence disguised as bedside manner was a privilege reserved only for supervising physicians,” she muses, fighting the urge to murder a troublesome patient. Or “like caring for her loin fruit was my life’s greatest privilege” of one ungrateful patient’s parent. She’s also nicknamed her arm muscles the “twiglets.” Whatever the opposite of Special Snowflake syndrome is, Kilco has it. She is well aware that she has zero outstanding talents, no looks to speak of, terrible dress sense, a bad attitude, and the closest she can get to a boyfriend is a dude who wants to use her to throw his possibly-homophobic mother off the scent. Talk about the hero we deserve. And yet, somewhere between the self-effacing humor and the incessant whining about how the Deities hate her, Kilco offers a few nuggets of wisdom: “Rolling in the blood of your enemies was preferable to swimming in the tears of your friends,” for example. Kilco, c’est moi.

That said, there are downsides to this novel: for starters, there are some awkward, awkward turns of phrase. Awkward enough that I began to wonder if maybe the entire text had been fed through Google Translate a time or two. “You could rest assured that Kirk would not only know every detail but had scientifically analysed them three times over by lunchtime,” Kilco observes about one character. Huh? Is there a verb missing in there, or possibly a tense that went somehow awry? Elsewhere: “the orb flew off course into a tree, enlightening it in flames.” Really? That is a very literal use of the term “enlighten.” The pacing could be more consistent. The story jerks from one semi-climax to the next, with some fallow ground in between.

If the teenagers feel deeply authentic, the adults are totally inexplicable. Ilya and the rest of the Ilvarjo feel a deep loyalty to a Princess who seems like a sadistic jerk. Ilya’s mother is a distant succubus. Even Kira seems to yo-yo between caring for her daughter and treating her like an unwelcome stranger. If their motivations seem opaque and their characters inconsistent, one could also argue that’s what adult society looks like to kids.

So, if some of the sentences take a few seconds to decipher, it’s worth it. This is a fun, funny story whose heroine genuinely grabbed me and whose emotional dramas I feel invested in. There are two more novels coming in short succession. I want to know: do Pogue and Ilya ever get to tell their parents about their relationship? What horrible thing happened in Kilco’s past? Do they all live happily ever after? Does anyone live happily ever after, or even live? This is a great book that, much like its heroine, benefits from not taking itself too seriously.

The writing is slow and takes a while to get into. It is the first book in a series and may just need some time to get going. Worth a look, but a little hard to get through. If you want a fast pace, If you don't mind a slow start with an interesting voice, give it a try.

I couldn’t get into this at all, the world building wasn’t good at all, it was confusing and felt flat, this book just wasn’t for me

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a free copy for an honest opinion

Unfortunately I struggled with this book from the start and although there seems to be many high ratings for this book it just was not for me. I found it jumped from one thing to another and not enough background to understand what was going on. Kilco was super annoying which I think was how she was meant to come across but still didn’t make me want to see her differently.
I think that the world the story is built in has a lot of potential but there was just not enough for me to want to take my time reading it. I think that I did skim about a quarter of the book so I could finish it which may have led to me missing something significant but I just didn’t care enough.
Thank you to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for a copy of this eARC in exchange for an honest review

DNF’ed.
I think I knew it after the first chapter that I wasn’t going to finish this.
It’s super confusing. There is no world-building, and it felt like the writing was all over the places. Jumpy and without logic (or I dare say editing?).

I didn’t feel for the character or understand enough what was going on and so I moved on.

Thank you anyway for the e-ARC.

Not my thing but I believe other people cold love it! I appreciate the world building it just left be wanting a little more.

Thank you to NetGalley and Andraharts Publications for providing me an ARC of this book.

This was a DNF for me, which is super rare. I found the world very difficult to get into, and readers are just thrown into the story with no explanation of what is what. Personally, I like stories that have much more world-building. This one felt like I was supposed to know everything already, so much of the time I felt lost, or like I was missing something important. The plot synopsis on NetGalley was also a bit misleading.

The narrative also was very jumpy. Often there were no transitions between scenes or conversations, which made the dialogue hard to follow. On top of that, I found it hard to relate to the main character, Kilco. While it can be interesting when you don’t particularly like the main protagonist, it’s very hard to commit to a story when the protagonist is unrelatable to the reader.

The premise is good, and the setting has promise, but it seemed that there were too many moving parts at work to make something cohesive. I don’t think the story itself was the issue for me, but the storytelling was off-putting. I did think the chapter titles were clever. There are great fantasy elements that I think many people would enjoy, however, this was just not my cup of tea.

Remnants of Atonement follows Kilco’s new life assisting in a war camp, there she makes new friends and enemies.

The book is really hard to get into, it was confusing because there is hardly any world building and so for the first half of the book, I did not know what was happening or the relevance of it. The writing style and the dialogue was a bit weird for me, the setting makes it seem like the book is a historical fiction and yet the dialogue is modern. I did like the main and side characters especially Kilco and her humour and her mum, but I found it hard to connect to the characters because I just did not understand what was going on. The relationship between the 3 main characters is awkward and a bit weird but I understand that it is meant to be, the characters are younger than I thought and I think there is an age gap between Kilco/Ilya and Pogue which I did not like as they are love interests, honestly the scene with Kilco was really uncomfortable and it was never addressed again regarding the comments she made about how she should feel during sex. The second half of the book is better and more structured, but the book lacks an overall plot, things occur but I do not know what the plot/purpose of the story actually is.

No one really liked the main character, I think that made it hard for me to connect to the story and the relationships she forms. However, the story itself is interesting and I enjoyed the concept of it.

2/5

Thank you, Netgalley for sending this to me for review. This is no way influences my thoughts or feelings.

2/5 Stars

I have many thoughts and feelings about this book. So I'm just going to break it down by the CAWPILE rating system and explain them categorically.

Characters: I didn't enjoy any of the characters. They were abrasive and very flat with what felt like no development the whole story. Also, they were moments where they were so hypocritical and I didn't understand the main character at all and it made it very hard to get through the book.

Atmosphere: There is little to no world-building to be found. You are immediately thrown in and some books can pull that off well but I was just so confused for the first quarter of the book.

Writing: Unfortunately, not everyone can afford or has the ability to obtain an editor to read over their book. I hate to take off points for that but it was glaringly obvious when the wrong words were used, words weren't properly separated, and the formatting was off. Again, that's not something I can really fault the author for too much because, as I said, an editor is expensive and it would be very classist of me to say that the author should've had someone read over this before releasing it to the public.

Plot: The synopsis was nothing like the book. Actually, the synopsis says something happens that doesn't happen at all, so I would take it with a grain of salt if you ever did read the summary. I truly couldn't tell you the point of this book. We were constantly going down different paths and avenues and then the ending was so abrupt that it didn't feel like a natural segway into a sequel.

Intrigue: There were definitely points that could be developed in the future but I don't see myself continuing on with the series to see those flourish.

Logic: Again, the characters would say one thing and completely go against their own actions. I didn't understand any of the emotions or thoughts of any of the characters.

Enjoyment: So with all the issues I had with the other categories in this review it was hard for me to get through and I found myself skimming towards the end because I just wanted to be done. I won't be continuing with the series. However, I do wish the best to the author and I hope that others do find things they enjoy from this

I received a free digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

DNF

I ended up putting this book down just before the halfway mark (40% according to my kindle). This book was very slow to begin and jumps around quite a bit. There were times when the story skipped severely enough that I thought I might be missing whole chunks of the book.

The author excelled at worldbuilding and their characters' personalities were well-rounded and overall likable. But after the first 40% of the book, it still felt like it was meandering. I couldn't catch on to any one plotline since the scenes skipped so sporadically. I felt like I was being fed random bits of information on the world and the characters with no real endpoint in mind.