I can see why this book appeals- it’s high fantasy with a varied cast and lots of well loved fantasy themes. I can’t quite tell you why I didn’t enjoy it? But I felt no attachment to the characters & the continuous introductions felt tedious. I’m sure other people will love it!

Thank you so much Netgalley & HarperCollins Children’s books for the e-Arc!

First line: No mortal alive had ever seen a Spindle.

Summary: Corayne, the daughter of a pirate, along with a band of misfits are on a mission to save their world from a growing threat. A new army has risen and is threatening everything they know.

My Thoughts: I was on the fence about reading this. In one corner it is exactly what I love. Young adult fantasy, perfect. Great cover, wonderful. Band of misfits, excellent. But I struggled through the last book in the Red Queen series so I wondered how this one would go. Maybe I am just not in the mood. Or I’ve read too many of these. It is a big book with lots of characters, many points of view and long chapters. I hope that one day, maybe when the rest of the trilogy is out I can pick them up and enjoy them but I only made it about 40% through before giving up.

FYI: Lots of POVs.

Oh Aveyard, you know how to write books! This story grabbed me from the beginning, and I was immediately invested! I thoroughly enjoyed the adventure, plot twists, and the band of random people coming together for a single cause. I enjoyed more that the band of people don't entirely trust each other because let's be honest, that is reality! There is a very cool world she has created, and I am hoping to see more of it as the series continues. The only thing that is holding me back from giving this 5 stars is that there are parts that seemed to drag a bit too long for me, but this is definitely a series that I will continue with, and one that I will be recommending to people!

I went into this book without knowing anything about the story. After reading the Red Queen series, I will pick up anything that Victoria Aveyard writes. This book is about a girl who is 'the chosen one' essentially, who goes on a journey with a ragtag team to save the realm. It started quite slowly, but picked up the pace in the latter half and was overall entertaining. The characters were enjoyable and a the twist was not what I expected. I will continue the series, but I hope there is a little more to the next two books.

Loved the Red Queen series? Wait till you get your hands on this one! So much action and suspense and the hope of romance- HIGHLY recommend!

I was excited to read another of Victoria Aveyard's books but I found this one did not hold my attention. I know that it's the first book in a series but there was a lot of world building. I didn't connect with any of the characters, they fell flat for me. I found myself skimming a lot to find the dialog to move the plot along. I don't have plans to read anymore in the series but I would still recommend my library to purchase this book for the younger teens.

I was a bit disappointed with this book, the main characters annoyed me. The book had many nice elements but the plot was slow. As someone who likes seeing multiple POV’s I think five was a bit too many. Erida’s POV was my favorite, villan or not she has unique goals and her marriage was fun to follow along with.

While I wasn’t the biggest fan of Victoria Aveyard’s previous series I really enjoyed this novel. The world building was fantastic and the characters were well developed.

This complicated, enthralling story has a large cast of characters with exasperatingly complex names and criss crossing plot lines, but it's a thrilling story of conquest and conquering, good vs. evil, and full of people finding strength they didn't know they had. It's also about people forming alliances they might never have considered under different circumstances and opportunities to change. It's definitely a YA read and people who enjoy stories like the Hobbit will love the world building.

I wanted to like this book but I just don’t think I’m a fan of Victoria Aveyard’s writing style. I ended up dnf’ing it but I did purchase a copy for my library because I know others love her.

I was excited to read an ARC of this book from Netgalley because I loved the Red Queen series and so do the teens at my library. All in all, this was a great first book to a new fantasy series! I loved the world building. It really transports the reader to the setting. The wide range of characters is also appealing. Multiple villains, morally gray characters, pirates, magic wielders, this book has everything! I also think teens will enjoy that it isn't focused on romance. It's more about the adventure and friendship and relationships between the characters.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I am no stranger to reading fantasy or books that tell the tales of made-up worlds, so the premise of Realm Breaker intrigued me. Since I have not read the Red Queen series, I didn't know much about Aveyard's writing style, but this was OK as I like discovering "new-to-me" authors.

Realm Breaker begins with quite a bit of world building, which I expected, but I felt like it dragged my reading progress to a crawl. This almost made me stop reading. Thankfully, there are multiple points of view woven in this tale, and that is what spurred me on to continue reading. I enjoyed the heart of the story even though it took me longer than expected to finish this novel. I enjoyed getting to know each of the characters. Despite my own personal hangups, Aveyard delivered a great first installment of the Realm Breaker series.

This book sounded so promising, and I tried so hard to like it...but unfortunately I just did not like it. I made it through chapter 11 before I finally gave up. By this point there were several different stories going on at one time, I never did understand the purpose of the spindle, and I felt as if I was missing a large part of the back story. Was this part of another series that I was unaware of?? I kept reading because I kept hoping that all of the different stories would eventually come together, but I just could not hold out long enough. Victoria Aveyard's The Red Queen series is a favorite in my school library. I can't seem to keep it on the shelf. I will probably purchase this book because the student's love the other series so much. Hopefully my teens will like it more than I did.

I really liked this book! It was so fun and a lot darker than I expected.
The one issue I had was with the beginning of the book. Some of the descriptions that f the places the characters were located were very confusing and the cities could have been developed more.
The pacing at times was a bit all over the place, but I throughly enjoyed this book and will be continuing the series!
For content wise, I think it is on the older end of YA fantasy, so some younger readers should be aware of some scenes with violence.

Victoria Aveyard can seriously do no wrong. Realm Breaker delivers another new world of diverse characters, witty banter, and oh-my-god-I-did-not-see-that-coming plot twists. This is the kind of book you devour in one sitting and complain when someone tries to diver your attention away.

Sigh. I…did not enjoy this book at all. It was a drag to get through, and 567 pages takes a long time to get through when you’re dragging through it.

I can only liken the narrative to skim milk. Good enough to hydrate in a pinch, but not fortifying enough to fill or use to take with some ibuprofen, which I needed to get through the book.

I feel this book had an overabundant amount of filler between the two or three action sequences that progressed the plot along at any measure of pace. The characters were thrown together haphazardly, didn’t mesh well together at all, and there was no common ground among them except to “save the realm” and keep the simpering sword wielder from dying.

The last 100 pages were more compelling than the first 463 ahead of it; more character interaction, unit cohesion, plot discoveries, and narrative twists (but not really) to make the reader leave the journey with a rousing feeling of forgetfulness for the drag the whole first 4/5 of the book put him or her through. I find that an unacceptable trait in a “bestseller.” Then again, who says bestsellers are good stories? They’re just good sellers.

My thanks to NetGalley for the albeit late approved ARC, (which I requested months before the release date and could not leave a review for until after the release date, which I usually never do because it's unprofessional) for which I give my own opinion.

There are ALOT of characters, places and individual stories in this book. My advice, just take them all in and they will eventually come together and make sense, don’t fight the goodness of the story! As usual Victoria Aveyard transports her readers to a magical realm of wizards, sea creatures and spindles pried open by an evil force. Corayne years for a life beyond the one she knows, hemmed in by her pirate mother who gets to have all the adventures. When an immortal elder and an assassin arrive and offer her a change she jumps at the chance, not really prepared for what is to come as they race to save the Ward. As their ragtag group of 7 travels towards the Spindles they find themselves lashed together by duty, honor and possibly friendship. Clearly this book is the beginning of another epic series by Victoria Aveyard!

Victoria Aveyard does what she does best, takes the reader on one crazy adventure and leaves them wanted to go on the next one. This book is so full of characters, countries, and even new realms that it took me quite a while to remember what name was a character and what was a place. Aveyard places the most random assortment of people together to save the world from those pesky villains. However, this book is long, kinda slow, and it really took me a while to wrap my head around what I was really reading and what was happening as there are so many POV's.

Thank you to NetGalley and publisher for an eARC of this book in return for an honest review.

I didn’t know what to expect going into Realm Breaker, as I’m probably the only person in my friend group and possibly in the world who hasn’t read Victoria Aveyard before – a mistake I will soon remedy, I promise – but I can say this: If you like fantasy, this is the book for you. And I’m not even quantifying that. Fantasy lovers in general are sure to find something to enjoy in the new series from the author of Red Queen.

As a reader, I prefer to stick more with low fantasy than high fantasy, which means that this might have been a book I overlooked if I hadn’t signed up to review it. My preference is always slanted towards more character-driven books, and I have even been known to forgive plot issues if the characters are compelling enough for me.

There are no plot issues to forgive in Realm Breaker, a very-well plotted book that nonetheless manages to strike the rare balance of also gifting us with compelling characters. From Corayne an-Amarat, our heroine, to the band of misfits that end up gathering around her, there’s bound to be at least one character that doesn’t just interest you, but touches you. This is a particularly hard thing to do when there are so many characters in a book, and even harder to do while establishing compelling dynamics between those characters. And yet here we are.

For someone who isn’t a typical high fantasy reader, this might seem like a long book, and it does take a little bit to get into it if you’re not truly used to the genre, but the plot is interesting enough to take you to where the characters take over, and then, when the characters seem like they need more to totally hook you, the dynamics between those characters take over, and you are absolutely gone. You can’t stop reading.

The dynamics, in particular, are super interesting, because as much as we all love a good team-as-family story, the best ones don’t truly start out that way, and this one really doesn’t. Instead you have a very confusing mix of characters who should be enemies – and in some cases remain so – but need to be allies, and who don’t actually get along or like each other that much. In fact, I’d even argue that these people mostly don’t care about saving the world, and they certainly don’t care about saving each other. All their care is about what’s best for them.

Our main character, Corayne, in particular, is set up not as someone eager to save the world, but as someone eager to see the world, to get away. We can all relate to parents being overprotective, and Corayne’s mother is that, but she’s also a hypocrite, considering she’s basically a pirate but her daughter needs to stay on land, and safe. “Safe” being a very relative term considering the second she wanders out alone she’s met with an grumpy immortal who was friends with the father she never knew, and who needs her, of all people, to save the realm.

Which, in the end, speaks to what makes this book exceptional. For every twist it delivers, for every trope it turns on its head, it truly takes you on a journey where you, for a moment or five, believe that you know what’s coming. You’ve seen a character like this one before, you know the beats. You understand them. And yet you never truly do, not the way you think so. The author is always one step ahead, which is always a delightful thing to realize in the middle of a book.

The crew of misfits at the center of this book doesn’t always make the right decisions. They don’t always have the best intentions. And there are times when you might want to throw a book at a wall, that’s how silly some of the decisions they make seem. But you never want to stop engaging with them, you never want to leave them to their own devices. Even when you’re mad, you’re invested. You’re seeing this thing through to the end.

We all have a favorite from this ragtag group, of course, and I will admit to having a little bit of a soft spot for the morally grey queen, and the stoic and yet actually mostly soft character. But everyone gets a moment to shine, or at least a moment to make you question your allegiance to just one character. It isn’t possible to like them all the best, but there are times where you might feel like you do.

I particularly want to take a moment to talk about worldbuilding, which isn’t always something that takes me out of a book, but it ends up being someone that can bring me into a world, make me invest more. The level of thought and care put into the worldbuilding in this book is exceptional and Allward feels like a real place, even if you might not recognize how it looks.

But if there’s one reason to give this book a try, it’s this one: the book is fun. Not light, not easy, no, but fun. And we could all use a fun book that makes us think a little, couldn’t we? And if that’s not enough, let me leave you with this quote, mostly because it hasn’t left me since I first read it. Tell me you don’t want to try the book after it:

“THERE ARE BREAKERS OF CASTLES, BREAKERS OF CHAINS, BREAKERS OF KINGS AND KINGDOMS.”
“WHICH AM I?”
“YOU ARE A REALM BREAKER. YOU WOULD CRACK THIS WORLD APART AND BUILD AN EMPIRE FROM ITS RUINS

When is the next one coming? Because if the answer isn’t tomorrow, then the wait is already too long for me to bear.

This one was one of my most anticipated releases of the year. I love the Red Queen series and mainly for the characters. I did really enjoy this book but I feel like it fell a little flat for me? I will definitely continue the series and I feel like my opinion will change once I see how this book set up the rest of the series. I just feel like the pacing was a little slow for me. I liked all the characters but I feel like I barely got to connect with them despite it being a long book. I do really look forward to book two though!