Lit Reader’s Reviews > The Lady of the Thorn: Everbound Chronicles > Status Update

80% in, they have just realized that E&D are star-crossed lovers that can’t touch each other because they trigger shattering earthquakes and dangerous tides that sink ships (ridiculous and disconnected from the previous magical setting about bushes and ancestral “boundaries”).

Only 20% left and no one really has a clue what’s going on, or what they are expected to do at all, as per sense, logic, or myth…

Everyone keeps mentioning how witty Elizabeth used to be, but clever Lizzy is not part of this story as far as we can read; every scene has been Elizabeth with a megrim, injured, insensible (fainting), or moaning her aches. There is not one scene in which she has been playful, lighthearted, or witty — Darcy cannot know she was witty, and can’t be surprised about her wit being gone or back (either way is moot)

Past 2/3 into the book and the author keeps having characters speaking in riddles; books that don’t offer answers, Elizabeth neurological decay, Darcy’s fake performative turmoil [ eye roll ]; a convoluted mix of boundaries, hedgerows, rotten grain, migraines, dizziness, a ghostly dog that does nothing, and cheap manufactured angst.

Elizabeth STILL has bad megrims 2 days out of 3, and we are treated to every excrutiating detail of her symptoms >> blurred vision, pain in her brow, pain in the back of her skull, weakness, diziness, unsteady feet, more pain, more muffled sounds, and on & on it goes for ENDLESS PAGES !

I can’t take it anymore, I hate this; can’t see the multy star ratings as honest of genuine here, be warned !

Endless accounts of Elizabeth developing a mystery ear-ache when she hears Mr Collins speak. No explanation, not even humor about it !

1/5 into the tale and I am bored and sick to d e a t h of endless descriptions of the earth moving in powerful yet indiscriptible ways, strength draining out of Elizabeth or Darcy every time they lift a hand or a foot, and a magical mystery dog just watching and judging… is this story actually going somewhere or not ???

Slow pace, high tension, unnecessary build-up, a whiff of angst foe no reason. Stretching too long before explaining the magic here — too much effort setting an emotional tone, and very little magical world-building…