And I hate to say that, because had she an editor, these books could have been great. The grammatical errors and type-o issues throughout made me think that it was just a sloppy conversion to .mobi. No one would publish something with so many errors, right? Wrong. When self-publishing, I guess editing isn't a concern. At times the errors made the story hard to read.
And then there's the story... Probably the biggest issue I have here is that this is not a trilogy. This is another thing an editor could have helped with...or someone, anyone! The author had to have shown this to someone before self-publishing, right?? In a trilogy (or series...) there is an overall issue (main story) and some smaller battles or issues (all of the sub-stories) that lead to the ultimate resolution. Sub-stories can be individual novels...so long as the ultimate goal remains present. Take HP, for example... There's the overall battle of good vs. evil, almost everyone vs. Voldemort. Each book had elements of that, yet each was its own story leading toward the resolution. The books built on each other. With each resolution, lessons were learned and characters grew...making them into characters who were capable of the final resolution. The Trylle books did not have sub-stories. There weren't lessons learned in books 1 and 2...they didn't end in appropriate places...they didn't work as stand-alone novels. The rise and fall of action never happened. There was very little growth, especially considering the circumstances. Had these books been seen by an editor, one book would have been the result. And that one book probably would have been decent.
Maybe. I guess now it's time for the spoilers. It took 26% of the first book for something to happen. Before then it was just weird girl and her nice friend and weird guy who stares at weird girl all the time. Not too much going on... but then, all of a sudden, weird guy tells weird girl that she's a troll. And so is he. I was not sure what to think...trolls!? But, no one writes about trolls. It's a good idea. And these trolls were sexy... They run off to the land of the trolls, and weird girl is informed that she's a princess. A very special princess. And she's also completely in love with weird guy. Thing is, she's a princess, and he's little more than a slave - it'll never work...they'd both be exiled. There was a lot of running away...and then it was over, with no resolution and without anything much really happening. There are some mildly dramatic things that happen in the next books, but they're all resolved far too simply. The secondary characters are far more interesting than the main character, and as the book is a first person narrative, that's very disappointing. Her voice isn't at all unique.
Anyway... girl can't have the guy she loves, and for the good of the kingdom, she marries a guy she doesn't love. It's ok though, because he doesn't love her either, and they're good friends. The night before the wedding, the guy she loves comes to her and wants just one night with her...but she says one night isn't enough. Then, a bunch of random things happen. People behave in ways that don't really make sense...the most interesting aspect of the story - the class system in the troll world, which is preventing lots of relationships - is glossed over. There are some war things with the bad trolls...there are some mildly political deals made...there are plans to help other trolls and make things better. Then, somewhere near the end of the third book, after spending all this time thinking that girl is going to change the world when she's queen so that she can be with the man she really loves, girl ends up cheating on her husband with random guy who came from the bad troll camp and has asylum. She wants just one night with him...but he doesn't think one night is enough. Right here she should have stopped and remembered her conversation with the guy she used to love...but that isn't what happened. Husband wants a divorce anyway because he doesn't love her... and so... she ends up marrying the guy she cheated with...not the one she loved for most of the story. She married 2 guys in less than a year...and no matter how happy and in love she seemed with the second, it's still the wrong guy. He was high-ranking, so it was a lot easier to write him in and make them get married than it would have been to change the world and write a love story that worked. Oh well. There was no conclusion. There was no progress. The world was just as messed up in the end as it was in the beginning, but hey, she married a guy who was her equal, and the one she'd loved was flirting with someone who was his equal... happy endings all around... :|
It just felt like...rather than take the time to do things right, the author took lots of easy ways out...and wound up with a very disappointing trilogy that could have been a really good novel. What a shame. It was sometimes painful to read simply because I was thinking about how good it could have been.
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