3/5⭐

Satisfying for a dystopian fantasy. I assume that I am not in this era and the book would have gained more stars in this review. But there were also pretty unsettling things that I actually didn't enjoy.

When it comes to characters I didn't manage to connect to Zee. And what a horrible mother she had...

It is challenging to understand or remember is the better word the whole world building. It feels that all of it is in the beginning of the book and you are left to rely on memories only further down the road.

Anyway, I don't think I will continue with the next book if there is another one.

𓇣 Plot:
'The Girl Who Broke the World' is a captivating dystopian fantasy set in a treacherous, yet beautiful post-apocalyptic landscape; in the aftermath of catastrophic events that extinguished billions of human lives, Earth is gradually healing. The world-building is richly evocative, introducing readers to a realm inhabited by a host of mystical beings, including medicine women, shapeshifters and formidable sea monsters. Governed by enigmatic magical forces, this intricate setting serves as a backdrop for a compelling narrative.

𓇣 Writing:
Accessible yet immersive, the prose is inviting, peppered with vivid descriptions that bring this recovering world to life. While the prologue leans heavily on exposition and there are a few superfluous words here and there, overall the writing remains clear and the pacing well balanced, keeping the reader engaged throughout.

𓇣 Characters:
Tenacious and kind-hearted, Zemira Creedence stands out as a courageous protagonist - a sheltered yet capable heroine, who finds herself nurturing latent gifts. Intriguing secondary characters, enriched with personal histories, prove themselves intrinsic to the plot. Heroes and villains alike, no one is entirely as they seem, their lives and motives interwoven.

𓇣 Impact:
The book subtly echoes ecological concerns while exploring themes of survival, forgiveness and transformation. Zemira’s journey is filled with surprising twists and gritty moments. The high-stakes action scenes, including exhilarating fights and a kraken encounter, provide ample peril.

𓇣 Overall:
An enjoyable first installment, 'The Girl Who Broke the World' is a satisfying fantasy adventure, driven by a colourful cast. I eagerly anticipate the next book in the series!

𓇣 🜃 𓇣 🜃 𓇣 🜃 𓇣 🜃 𓇣 🜃 𓇣 🜃 𓇣 🜃 𓇣 🜃 𓇣 🜃 𓇣 🜃 𓇣 🜃 𓇣 🜃

Genre:
🜃 High fantasy
🜃 Dystopian


Tropes:
🜃 Post-apocalyptic
🜃 Ecological disaster
🜃 High-Stakes action
🜃 Witches
🜃 Shapeshifters
🜃 Magical creatures
🜃 Quest
🜃 Hidden power
🜃 Found family
🜃 Strong female protagonist
🜃 Rescue mission
🜃 Evil overlord

Renee Hayes's The Girl Who Broke the World is book one in the Rim Walker series, a deeply moving story full of magic, adventure, drama, wonder, and excitement.

The Girl Who Broke the World is a story that rich in detail, bringing the vibrancy, the ind!ividual details, to life, giving readers a glimpse of what life is like in the not to distant future, after Humans practically destroy life as we know it. Because Humans almost destroy everything with over population, World War III, climate change, smog, over hunting, and more, Mother Nature steps in and creates a wall, keeping Humans on one side and everyone else on the other, but the animals are able to go back and forth at will. To protect the wall, and make suew the Humans are doing as they should, Mother Nature appoints a garden of her choosing.

However, there are those that don't agree with the Guardian's choice and believe she has become sick due to the power she wielded for sor long and are trying everything in their might to stop her. One King is even going through entire towns, using a new powder his scientists found to knock people out so he can kidnap the teenagers in search of one girl in particular whose mother is Human and her father is a Shifter, the son of the Guardian. Only the girl just found out he was her father, for hewas stuck in wolf form because he made his mother angry for breaking one of her rules, contorting with a Human and getting her pregnant. When the King kidnaps his daughter however, he makes his way to his mother's temple and makes a bargin to allow him to go and save her as a Human.

Thankfully the girl doesn't need much rescuing due to the powers she wields - she just needs someone to be the for her when she makes a mistake and uses too much power and someone ends up killed unintentionally., or worse, when too much power is taken from her without her consent and she's left beaten and bruise, and left practically dead ,she needs her family (blood and chosen) by her side.

It's not until she wakes up that takes her father with her to go warn the Gaurdian of what is going on, that the girl realizes the Guardian is just like she was told and needs to be stopped.

In some says, The Girl Who Broke the World is like an older, female version of Harry Potter with all of the magic, mystery, and action going on. The two biggest differences being one) there are no wizards (yet anyway) and two) the two girl is not an unwanted orphan. She knows her mother loves her and she just found out about her father and father and how she's the center of his entire world, and that realization helps helps her focus her powers in a time when it matters the most.

Ms. Hayes does an excellent job using today's current events to make a post apocalypse future for mankind, and while not exactly realistic, whose to say it won't happen? The scientists have not even come close to discovering everything there is to see out there. So, whose to say there will be no Rim Gaurdian or Watcher?

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for granting me free access to the advanced digital copy of this book.

Book one of the YA Rim Walker series. The year is 2032 and everything has changed in the world. Humans have destroyed the beauty and resources of the planet. Now there is magic and creatures that are not what they seem. Can Zemira Credence save the world? This book sets up the next very well. Characters are interesting. Thanks #Netgalley and #ReneeHayes for the eARC in exchange for a honest review. All opinions are mine.

This was a good young adult novel. The main character was well thought out and grew quite a bit over the course of the novel. There were a few to many "endings". The book was very well set up for a second book in the series.

I seem to be reading books with a lot of potential and bad execution lately

This book was a mess in every aspect, from the writing to the characters, and it’s a real pity because the base concept could have made for a really good post-apocalyptic story.
The writing was really baffling, it felt like this was actually an unedited first draft. Dozens of mistakes, ambiguous grammar that made me reread sentences, prefabricated sentences that you see in every 2010s ya book that didn’t really have any relevance in here…and similes with never before introduced pieces of worldbuilding that have to be explained in the same sentence. There are too many and too long descriptions of everything, that manage not only to make the book and pacing really boring and slow, but that are also vague and don’t bring anything to the story, since they’re mentioned once and never seen again.

The prologue…oh lord the prologue. You know every author that advises not to start off with exposition? They’re right, listen to them. You can’t introduce the entire worldbuilding and premise of the story in the prologue and expect readers to remember all that information, which is, again, vague, and take it for good. To make things worse, the story has no fixed villain and no fixed objective. You can and should have different objectives throughout the whole story of course, but they have to make sense in a bigger set of circumstances, otherwise it’s just a succession of events that don’t feel connected to each other.
It really seemed to be reading something written by a very inexperienced teenager. How do you make digressions during flashbacks? How can you put important information in subordinates, making them syntactically less important, and introduce secondary characters making them feel important just to make them never appear? Was this sentence really necessary: ‘Jill leaned in and squeezed Zee into her large breasts, giving her a long, warm hug’? And ‘somehow’ is not a good explanation, especially in a fantasy book.

And the story... It could have all been solved by making two characters, that have known each other for a long time, who are basically family and in good terms…just talk. The whole story has no reason to go the way it goes, and the worst part is that you can only come to understand this at the end of the book. You read the book hoping for things to make sense and they just…crumble at the very end, making the effort of reading useless.
Characters and character dynamics are just as bad. Dialogues (marked by simple quotes by the way) are almost robotic. The characters just don’t feel human while talking, making interactions feel extremely awkward and pointless, since they don’t help make the relationships feel real. More than three characters in the same scene and it all goes nuts; a dozen soldiers have to capture two teenagers and only two actually act. What are the others doing? Are they just standing there and watching? Why does no one have tranquillizers? You have the technology to make the main character’s magic useless but you have to resort to hitting their head to capture them? And even in scenes with only two characters show that they only share one braincell: you are trying to escape a hospital, you spend ages memorising dozens of cameras’ movements and yet…you don’t even imagine that there would be a guard at the entrance? And why make characters forget information they already know? Why purposefully make them dumb? But what really messed with my brain is how the author thought it normal that a very, very old man (older than the main character’s father), who tried to forcefully make the main character’s mother marry him and have a child with him…become a love interest…of the main character. And an even older woman make inappropriate remarks about an 18 years old boy.


Other things that bothered me:
- References or straight up rip offs of other media: multiple Harry Potter references, the same glowing forest from Avatar, the Walmart version of Bilbo’s sword in the form of a necklace that doesn’t work the majority of the time, uncle Ben’s signature sentence
- The title makes no sense. It’s something the actual villain of the story calls her, together with ‘the destroyer of worlds’. You don’t have to call her names that sound good but that make no sense, so why?
- You can revive dead people by injecting the nice memories you invaded their privacy to obtain in their heart. Ok.
- The main character’s mother is a terrible person. She wants her child to have a normal childhood so she pulls her out of school, she forbids her from going in the village, she tells her to trust no one and not to make any friends, she doesn’t tell her that the wolf she’s been playing and hunting with is her father…
- What’s the point of physically hurting your main character and giving them scars if they can just magically make them into tattoos? To make them look cool and pretty? Can’t they just get…normal tattoos instead?
- There are basically two epilogues
- What does ‘Farr out!’ mean

A very fun scifi adventure. A YA dystopian adventure with a cool plot and enough twists and turns to keep us guessing. I did enjoy the characters and seeing as this is book one of a series, I will be keeping my eye out for book two, as well as any other books by Renee Hayes!