An Idiot's Review of Urdaisunia

When I read a book one of the biggest things, for me, that can make or break it are the characters. If I read a book with a flimsy plot I'm more than happy to overlook it if the characters are solid. Heck, I'm even willing to forgive shoddy world building and mediocre prose for the sake of good characters. Thankfully, in the case of Urdaisunia by Ms. Kyra Halland, it's not just the characters who happen to stand out and help create a pretty interesting story.

Now this story starts out of with a prologue. Since we all know how I feel about prologues I won't go into a rant about, instead we'll fast forward to the beginning of the book. It actually starts out with a young widow named Rashali, recently she lost her husband and her young daughter to illness. On top of that there's a drought going on, her country has been taken over by the Sazar, and the rebellion group she's apart of is full of idiots. However her entire world get's thrown on its head when the prince of the Sazar, Eruz, decides to spare her life...Well that and the gods decide to use her as the token peice of a bet. If she marries Eruz then the goddess of Earth and the god of water will 'mate' and make it rain.


Now the main plot makes it seem like Rashali is some amazing chosen one. Especially when other gods begin rooting for her, how almost every man in power wants to have her, and how her decisions will effect the entire world. Basically the whole savior shtick. However whenever Rashali makes a decision it has serious consequences. There rarely seems to be the 'super special awesome savior net' that so many stories have for their characters. If Rashali makes a bad decision it comes back to bite her in the butt later.

Now let's talk about the characters. Personally, I found Rashali to be a very strong female character. And not in this haughty, angsty, if not manish way that seems to be all the rage. Rashali was clever, had a healthy dose of common sense, and seemed to learn from her mistakes. Who cares that she couldn't fight for almost the entire story, the fact that she could use brain over brawn was really refreshing.

Eruz, her love interest, was an okay guy. I felt like he happened to fall for Rashali far too quickly, but then again it was never clear enough for me to determine if the goddess of love had anything to do with it. Aside from that I think he was a good character, not one strong enough to be the center of attention the entire story, but one that I did  enjoy reading about when his parts came up. He seemed like an honest and good man, bound between duty and love, something you often get in the romance-fantasy genre.


To be honest, I was completely disappointed by Eruz's siblings and the king. All three felt like standard villains with no real defining traits. Yes, we understand that the brothers want the throne for themselves, and yes we understand that the father has ridiculously high expectations. We get it. But there needs to be more traits in the people we have to despise aside from greed, jealousy, and greed. If anything I was more curious as to why the father wanted Eruz to die, or if that was just in the heat of the moment. Aside from that I never felt an ounce of disgust, curiosity, or satisfaction when these guys did anything.

Finally there's the gods. Not much to say here, they acted in typical tropes for each type of thing they were patron over. If anything, they heavily reminded me of the Greek gods and the story of Athena or the Titans. It was interesting in theory, but the archetypes chosen for the gods made them boring and predictable. And due to the focus on the humans in this story, there just wasn't enough room in it to evolve the gods further.

The many pitfalls in character, actually got saved by world building. First off this story happens to be in an almost Middle Eastern setting. So often times Rashali had to go through deserts, rocky hills, and fertile plains thanks to Urdaisunia's rivers. Not only is the setting interetsing, but the various cultures that we're introduced to. The Sazar have to have five wives, a contracted concubine ring, and didn't have a writing system before invading Urdaisunia. The Urdai have their own traditions and were even the ones who introduced writing to the Sazar. There were other cultures as well, but they were more left in the background so that the Sazar and Urdi world could shine.

In general I found this story to be very entertaining. An amazing read if you want a romance fantasy, that is a bit more involved than the typical romance book.

If you wanna buy the book get it here.

Okay, I need to go cry in a corner now. Tokyo Ghoul is a very cruel mistress....