It’s only as I pick up speed, careering toward the edge, that I think what a horribly bad idea this was. I step forward and crouch into a full slide down the sloping roof of the bakery. My whole body tenses as I scan around me-the advancing guards, the drop to the cold, hard ground behind me. Another guard appears behind the first, and then I see the line of them, all following, all armed with swords, crossbows, or ceremonial daggers that are more than just decorative. A panicked noise comes out of me before I can stop it.Ī member of the Guard shouts behind me. In desperation, I lie full-length on my stomach, bitter cold seeping through into my body, and reach as far as I can. I stretch farther around the gutter, moving my hands fast over the whole area. I’ll give it 3 stars because it did at least try to keep my attention.īloomsbury | 1st April 2017 | AU$12.My hands fumble for the ladder propped against the side of the bakery-my route to the street. If you are looking for this trope, try Gilded Cage and Tarnished City. This one was tolerable, but nothing special. I’m not going to be looking out for another novel in this series.

Slightly off topic, but why is ‘Valor’ as a name always just with an ‘o’, but ‘valour’ as in the personality trait has an ‘ou’? I’m well aware that the Americans use the ‘o’ and Australians use ‘ou’, but it still makes no sense! I left this novel far too long to review after reading it, and I now don’t remember as much as I should. Somehow, the guards just happened to be a lot stupider than the last 300 years? Valor herself is fine, but there are plenty of other strong female protagonists that you can get behind in other, better novels. And then it turns out, surprise surprise, that there is someone else working there who could potentially help them!Īlthough there was potential for action, it seemed like all the plans Valor had in place were too predictable to succeed.

It revisited old tropes of a sister being wrested away unfairly because of a crime she didn’t commit, and then her sibling doing something equally ‘awful’ in order to be sent there so that they can escape.

Valor is sure that her love for her sister will be enough – and her plan will surely succeed. Valor is heartbroken without her sister, so badly that she is determined to rescue her sister from a prison that no-one has escaped in over three hundred years.

Prisoner of ice and snow series