Rebecca Crunden Archives - Proud Book Reviews

March 9, 2023March 10, 2023

These Violent Nights – Rebecca Crunden

This book contains:

Extreme class segregation and persecution
“Ownership” of people similar in some ways to slavery
Descriptions of and the aftereffects of genocide
Drugging
Attempted rape
Attempted and completed murder.

Thorn is the primary character we follow for roughly two thirds of the book, however, we also spend about one third following Lucien.

Thorn is a human who’s suffered immense trauma from the Suriia and is hell bent on revenge for the murder of her family while also trying to do her best to protect her “little sister” Thistle. She’s a tough nugget, strong willed, suspicious of all and entirely dedicated to her cause.

Lucien is a Suriia of unknown origins (until the last third of the book) who’s suffered immensely at the hands of humans. Not initially from the same Earth as Thorn is, he’s suffered similar trauma but responds in quite a different way. For him, he’s all about creating a safe space for his family to live out their days without drawing more attention to themselves than they need to.

Thorn and Lucien are battling their own demons while trying to find a better life for themselves and their loved ones. We follow Thorn until she meets Lucien and then go back a bit to get a bit of Lucien’s history until he meets Thorn. And then everything changes, and we learn exactly how intricate everything is, and follow them as they do their best to fix it.

I’ve read and reviewed the entire of The Outlands Pentalogy, and really enjoyed Rebecca’s writing. So when I discovered she’d entered this book into the 2022 Book Bloggers Novel of the Year Award (BBNYA), I thought I knew what I was getting into. But boy was I wrong!

Although I did have mixed feelings about this as I read it. I loved the first third, then was super confused for the entire of the second third and felt betrayed and so conflicted. But then my trust was restored in the final third. If you read this, please give the second third a chance! It will make sense and work out for the best by the end of it!

I promise!

By the very end I was so happy, and while I’d kinda like to know what happens further in the future for all of them, I’m not disappointed in how it ended.

October 10, 2022July 30, 2022

A Time of Prophecy – Rebecca Crunden

This book contains:

Civil war
War crimes
Human experimentation (without consent)
Genocide
Murder.

Following Kitty, Nate and Thom throughout the book we’re constantly changing perspectives depending on what’s happening. All three are fighting fit and ready to accomplish anything they set their minds to.

Kickstarting the overall storyline for this book is Kitty being brought back into the Kingdom to stand trial for releasing a strain of the Plague that had no antidote and resulted in millions of people dying. When Kitty goes with them to be interviewed on her part in this happening, she learns the current state of the Kingdom and realises that she can’t continue with her life in the Outlands knowing what’s happening within the Kingdom.

I’m going to come right out with my main gripe about this book.

It needed to be longer.

There, I said it!

Rebecca has created such an intricate, complex world that the events that play out in this book can’t be covered in the same depth as the previous books in the same number of pages. It just doesn’t work.

Kinda like the final Harry Potter book was split into two movies coz they knew they couldn’t do it justice in one movie. This book needed more time than a single book can provide AND give us the same level of detail and quality I’ve come to expect from this series.

So in a way this gripe is also a compliment (because Rebecca has created such a rich world), so you should definitely take that as the positive it is!

I just really wish Rebecca had decided to write a longer final book since we couldn’t make it 6 books given the name of the series (The Outlands Pentalogy). While it’d take longer to read, I definitely think it would’ve been worth it!

October 3, 2022July 30, 2022

A Dance of Lies – Rebecca Crunden

This book contains:

Revenge (including psychological torture, physical torture, bloodshed and murder/killing).

Unlike the first three books, this book mostly follows Kitty, but also has moments of following Thom or Nate allowing us to gain perspectives from all three of them during their time in the Outlands.

Kitty, Nate and Thom are building a life for themselves in the Outlands despite Quen constantly attacking them and the others from the Kingdom wanting to return to fight for freedom. As tensions reach breaking point, Riddle and Kitty develop a special bond that has Nate questioning the future of his relationship with Kitty.

Coming straight off the back of A Promise of Return, the pace and drama of this just wasn’t the same. It’s not that it was bad, it’s just that I wasn’t constantly wishing I could stop what I was doing and keep reading.

There were certainly stretches of the book where I felt that way. But to set up for those parts, others needed to be a bit slower, more relationship focused and less adrenaline pumping.

The main reason for scoring this one a little lower was that we’ve gone from following just one character then whole way through, to occasionally swapping perspectives. Being book 4 and the first time this is happening it thew me off a little which also threw me out of my reading zone.

If you go in expecting to suddenly change perspectives a couple times you may not experience that “thrown” feeling quite so much. But I wasn’t expecting it, so it did throw me.

Otherwise, the culmination of all the build up at the end surprised me, drew me in but also left me wondering what was left to cover in the fifth and last book of the series.

September 26, 2022July 30, 2022

A Promise of Return – Rebecca Crunden

This book contains:

Torture
Slavery
Gladiator style ring fighting to the death
Sex for information and social advantage
Cannibalism
Mental suffering.

Thom is the brother to Nate (A History of Madness follows Nate, and he’s heavily included in A Touch of Death) and Complement to Kitty (A Touch of Death follows Kitty, and she’s heavily included in A History of Madness) and a master of words. He’s a politician through and through and has been since he was a child.

Finding ways to advantage his loved ones is something he’s done his entire life, it’s natural for him. Yet there is so much more to him than just making sure his brother and Complement are safe and happy.

Picking up from near the end of A Touch of Death, we follow Thom as he’s caught breaking into restricted government buildings and brought to the King for judgement. From there we follow him throughout his torturous days until he’s reunited with Nate and Kitty (the ending of A History of Madness) and then continues from there as he tries to build a life in the Outlands.

Hearing Thom’s story, how he became who he was, made so many small pieces of his personality that showed in the first two books make sense. He’s a fixer. He needs to make sure those around him are happy, healthy, and safe and if doing so also sets him up for advantage later, all the better.

While I wasn’t expecting the relationship he developed with Charles (purely because this part of his personality wasn’t really mentioned in the first two books), after hearing about his earlier life it made sense. When you’ve only known someone to be straight, it is a shock to discover that’s not the case. For me personally, so long as it makes sense for the characters to suddenly change (and in this case it wasn’t sudden, we just didn’t have the full backstory before this book), I don’t care.

In this instance, Thom’s sexuality played a major part of the storyline and therefore made sense. So I have zero issues, instead, I found it added value, complexity and depth to several characters that enhanced the story overall.

Compared to the previous two books, this is definitely bloodier and gorier. But I found I quite liked it!

Sometimes you need the blood and guts to break up other genres and every part of that added thrill and adrenaline to my reading experience and set me up to want to dive immediately into the next book.

November 22, 2021November 21, 2021

A History of Madness – Rebecca Crunden

This book contains:

References to rape
Murder
Abortion
Kidnapping
Same sex sexual preferences
Religious cult including references to human sacrifice
References to scientific experimentation on humans.

We’re following the same characters as in A Touch of Death, but this time, Nate is the main character we’re following. And we’re introduced to a new character I’m hoping will feature more in the coming books.

While we left with Kitty knowing where Nate was, we pick up with Nate entering Redwater prison. Nate’s being pulled left and right, being tested on and finds himself in a workcamp rather than being executed. Nate being Nate finds a way to escape and works on reaching the same goal he had in A Touch of Death, to reach the Outlands.

I can’t believe I took so long to get back to this book!

I got to the end, and while I was able to guess the final surprise, I was still left wondering where the whole story would go in the coming books. Knowing that the series is finished, and I can smash through them when I want, I’m excited!

And yes, I have actually gone and bought the whole series because I can just tell that I’m going to love them and want them on my bookshelves.

There is such a great mix of action, romance, grief, societal change, religious conflict and cultural differences. Rebecca packs so much into a single story, and yet, it doesn’t feel preachy, it doesn’t feel like it’s trying too hard, and it definitely doesn’t feel unbalanced or rushed.

It’s got such a great pace and winds the elements together in such a way that they feel natural and like they’re all building to a greater part of the story. To add value to the overall storyline across the whole series. While they don’t always make sense in the current book, I can feel that they’ll make sense in the long run and I’m so excited!

March 15, 2021March 8, 2021

A Touch of Death – Rebecca Crunden

This book contains:

attempted rape
murder
mentions of genocide and terrorism,
dictator style government.

Kitty and Nate are our central characters throughout the story; however, the story is focused on being told from Kitty’s view. We also have Evander, Zoe and Tove join us about halfway through in a way that I wasn’t expecting and somehow end up feeling like an integral part of the story.

Kitty is a strong, survivor, who fights tooth and nail throughout the book against everything she believes, and learns, to be wrong about her world. Even her own beliefs.

Kitty, who is Complemented to Thom, starts our story wandering the Nitoib mountains with Nate. A place they aren’t allowed to be. When they finally make it out of the mountains and Thom meets up with them, we discover where this story is going.

In the direction of a dictator government out to get them, while they fight for their lives across the whole breadth of the kingdom in the search for the one thing they need. The one thing that might not even exist. The one thing that might just get them killed or imprisoned.

I’m not a fan of the six parts rather than chapters, but those breaks also make total sense so I can’t hate them. Maybe chapters rather than section breaks would’ve made things a little better?

That combined with a slow start made it quite difficult for me to get into it. But that one little thing got my interest and held it the entire way through the entire book. When I got to the end of the first book, I was actually a little upset that it was ending!

This is the first book in a Pentalogy and I’m really hoping I get to keep reading more coz I have my own ideas of what I think will happen. But that doesn’t mean they’ll happen, so I want to know how Rebecca has it all planned out, well written out since the whole series is done!