Rating: WARTY!
I had three strikes against this novel going in, so let me list them right here up front. Firstly, I am not a fan of series because they are rarely well-done and all-too-often spread what's at best a single novel over three or more sorry volumes, which is a dire waste of trees to say nothing of a waste of time in my opinion. Given a choice, I'd rather have the trees. Once in a while an author can make a series shine, but for me that's a rare treasure to encounter.
The second problem is first person PoV which almost never works, and it's astounding to me that so many authors, especially in the YA world, make the mistake of wooden-headedly jumping on this insane bandwagon. Thirdly, this is book 2 of 'The Medoran Chronicles', and I suffer from a long-standing revulsion towards any book which has 'chronicles', or 'codex', or 'cycle', or 'saga' in the title. This one, strictly speaking, did not have it in the title as such, and I thought that the simple one word title, Raelia, sounded pretty cool, but that fact that it was part of a chronicles did leave a bad taste in my mouth. Mitigating against that was the blurb, which suckered me in, making me think that this was an interesting story. It wasn't.
For one thing, the main female character was far too stupid to be of interest to me. Alexandra Jennings is a 16-year-old whose archaeologist parents are thoroughly irresponsible. They did not even notice that she had gone missing for an entire summer in volume one, evidently (I did not read volume one). Now Alex is coming back for her second year of champagne wishes and caviar dreams at the Akarnae Academy and in the words of Robin Leach, I don't know why!
Alex was a special snowflake in volume one evidently, finding herself roommates with the Princess of America and eventually becoming 'The Chosen One'! Yes, this is set in the US for obscure reasons, but everything is renamed. The US is Medora and inexplicably, it has king and queen. Even though this is in a parallel universe, I have no rational or logical explanation for how this came to be. Nor do I get how Alex can be openly threatened, at the birthday party of her best friend, the princess, by Aven Dalmarta, the man who kidnapped Alex in volume one, and not think once of calling out to everyone that this guy is openly threatening her. Again. Instead she deliberately knocks over the king and queen as they're dancing, in a dumb attempt to 'protect' the princess from a non-problem of a dramatically lesser magnitude. None of this made any sense at all to me.
The next dumb thing she does is to facilitate the princess going unescorted downtown, when the king has ordered his daughter to remain in the palace. Alex is dragged into an empty house by Aven, who somehow magically knew exactly which route Alex would take, even down to which side of the street she would walk on and at precisely what time, even though she has unexpectedly changed plans and done something even she had not expected to do! Alex gets no blame for this excursion. Only the princess is held responsible! That's how special Alex is.
It was at this point that I quit. I could not stand to read any more. The author is evidently a big fan of Disney movies, and it shows too much here. It was too hard to take this seriously. The novel is supposed to be about young adults, but it's written as though it's a middle-grade novel. It would have read better had the main characters been four years younger. I've read some good middle-grade novels, but reading this for me was like trying to walk on a floor made of giant, sticky marshmallows and wishing you could ski on the fresh powder instead of choking on it. While I wish the author all the best with this series of course, it's not for me, and I cannot recommend it.
Here's a thought I had after I posted the review and explains another part of my discomfort with this novel. There is this one section which reads thus:
King Aurileous was tall and intimidating, but even from where Alex stood she could tell he had a kind face with prominent laughter lines. His eyes were warm as he scanned the sea of cheering people and his smile made her feel relaxed despite the overwhelming atmosphere. Queen Osmada seemed, in a word, lovely. She was beautiful, with her dark auburn hair, and her smile was even more calming than the king’s.Note the difference between how the man is described (Kind face, prominent laughter lines, warm eyes), and how the woman is dismissed: "She was beautiful". That's it - 'pretty' much. Once again a female writer tells us that the only value a woman can offer is to look pretty and smile as she hangs on the arm of her kind, warm owner. Barf!
