| Book Review: The Hawkweed Prophecy (Irena Brignull) | ||
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Book title | The Hawkeed Prophecy |
| Series/standalone | The Hawkweed Prophecy #1 | |
| Author | Irena Brignull | |
| Pages | 304 | |
| Year published | 2016 | |
| Category | Genre | Young Adult | Urban Fantasy | |
| Rating |  |
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Official Summary
The babies were born as the clock struck twelve. A bat fell from the air mid-flight. A silver salmon floated dead to the surface of the river. Snails withered in their shells, moths turned to dust on the night breeze and an owl ate its young. The spell had been cast.
Poppy Hooper has managed to deceive her father into believing that there is nothing mysterious or unnatural about her. He ignores the cats that find her wherever she goes, the spiders that weave beautiful lacy patterns for her, even her eyes – one blue, one green with an extra black dot orbiting the pupil.
Ember Hawkweed is a pitiful excuse for a witch. When the other girls in her coven brew vile potions, Ember makes soap and perfume. Fair and pretty, Ember is more like a chaff than a witch. One of the Hawkweeds will be queen of the witches – but everyone knows it won’t be Ember.
When the two girls meet, Poppy discovers her powers, and finds out the truth. Bound by their unlikely friendship and the boy they both love, the girls try and find their place in the world. But the time of the prophecy draws nearer – and the witches won’t give up the throne without a fight.
Review
Disclaimer: I received an e-galley from the publisher via netgalley.
I wasn’t sure what to expect from this book. A surprise, for once. A fresh take on tropes so common like “switched at birth” and “prophecy”. Whatever it was, it wasn’t this.
The Hawkweed Prophecy opened with two witch sisters. One of them was having a baby and the other one… well, she wasn’t happy with the fact because she envisioned her own daughter to be the one prophesied to bring glory to their people. The prologue, I’m sorry to say, was the most interesting part of the book. Raven and Charlock are at least interesting and had a complicated relationship, they loved each other and Raven couldn’t bear the thought of her sister got hurt, but she didn’t want her niece to become the child of prophecy.
Unfortunately, the story then jumped into years later and switched to Poppy and Ember, now in their teenage years. These two were pretty much two-dimensional characters. Essentially, however, they are still okay and even had a few interesting encounters and scenes together. Just when I thought this book would deliver a nice take on female friendships or well, any kind of relationship really, Hawkweed Prophecy dropped a brick on my hope. Enter Leo, the least interesting, cannot make up his mind, most annoying love interest ever. Oh and everyone seems to fall in love head over heels with this guy. What really annoys me was not the insta-love (there’s plenty of it here), but I’m talking about how this book treated him as the only eligible bachelor in the entire planet and that all the girls are hopeless once they laid their eyes on him. The story tried to explain this with how the ladies are quite isolated and never saw a male before, but to be honest that sort of a weak excuse to explain the insta-love. Curiosity maybe, but not love. Okay, back to the love interest. He was not only unnecessary for the protagonists’ character development, he made them seem childish and unlikeable. The only thing he adds was another conflict to the already bloated storylines.
Another character, or should I say characters, that suffered from two dimensionality were the enemies. They were so cliché and had no layer of complexity on their evilness. I wish for more historical background of the enemies here, perhaps of the century-long conflict between the two clans. Lacking context, the big battle turned into just another part of a formulaic story.
Alright, let’s talk a bit about the writing. There is no doubt that the writing was competent. There was, however, something about it that I couldn’t quite put my fingers on that made the narrative felt jumpy and the dialogue awkward. The multiple narrators were also not very well executed. The author tried to tell the story from different perspective, instead it turn into an overexplanation with no surprise left for the reader.
Final Score
1.5 stars (out of 5 stars)
Verdict
The Hawkweed Prophecy tried to give fresh take on common tropes, but it felt flat due to poor execution, unnecessary love triangle, and the blandness of characters.
Windie
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