Review: Eden Conquered

Eden Conquered 
Rating: 3/5
Buy or Borrow: Borrow
Source: Copy courtesy of the publisher!

The Trials of Virtuous Succession have ended. Prince Andreus is king—and Princess Carys is dead.

But even as he’s haunted by what he did to win the throne, Andreus discovers that his dream of ruling only brings new problems. The people love his twin even more in death than they did when she was alive. The Elders treat him as a figurehead. And worst of all, the winds of Eden are faltering. 

But despite what everyone believes, Carys is alive. Exiled to the wilderness, Carys struggles to control the powers that have broken free inside her. And as she grows stronger, so does her conviction that she must return to the Palace of Winds, face her twin and root out the treachery that began long before the first Trials started. 

The Kingdom of Eden is growing darker with each passing day. Brother and sister, former foes, must decide whether some betrayals cut too deep to be forgiven—and whether one will wear the crown or both will lose everything. 

Okaaaaay, so, the previous book I had a few issues with but the last part of the book blew me away and I was anticipating this book being a lot better than the first. That's partly true. I feel like the writing was a lot better this book, there was a lot more action and things going on and some brilliant plot twists. 

One of my main issues with this book is that I distinctly remember Andreus being a Class A douchebag and really unlikeable in the previous book. So I had zero sympathy for him in this book, and I actually still think he's an idiot. I still didn't really like him, he spent a lot of the book trying to work out who he can trust and still not entirely trusting Carys. So I couldn't really get behind the ending of the book.

Carys meanwhile, I feel, is a lot stronger than she was before. She's determined and she's struggling with her new power, but isn't letting it deter her and I fully applauded for her when she confronted Andreus. I do feel like she kind of took a backseat at points, and blokes did everything for her. While I did ship her with Errik, at the same time I don't think there was enough time spent on their romance. To be perfectly honest, she's with Errik and Garret at the beginning, then Garrett, then Errik miraculously shows up, and then Garret and Errik are both gone until they show up at the end. I just felt it was a bit strange in particular that Garret vanished until the end of the book. 

The world is fascinating and I'd love to know more about it, I wish we could have seen more of it. I wish we could have seen more of the monsters and spent more time dealing with all of that instead of Andreus's trust issues. I feel like this book had some pacing issues, and a few scenes seemed a bit random. While the pacing was a bit better this book, in contrast to the first book being quite slow, this one felt too fast with not enough things explained or expanded upon. 

While this may have been too fast paced at points, and some scenes where missing or not expanded upon that I felt should have been, there where some brilliant plot twists which made this a much more interesting read than the previous book. I'm not going to lie to you all though, the ending did really disappoint me. It felt a bit anti-climatic but I think mostly it was personal preference because of my dislike for the character, and I still couldn't bring myself to like him by the end of the book.