Song of Sorrow Book Review

Song of Sorrow by Melinda Salisbury

From Goodreads: Sorrow Ventaxis has won the election, and in the process lost everything…

Governing under the sinister control of Vespus Corrigan, and isolated from her friends, Sorrow must to find a way to free herself from his web and save her people. But Vespus has no plans to let her go, and he isn’t the only enemy Sorrow faces as the curse of her name threatens to destroy her and everything she’s fought for.

It’s been a while since I read State of Sorrow. At the time, I really enjoyed it, and I thought it was a great book. And although a lot of my friends and fellow book bloggers were totally blown away with Song of Sorrow, I wasn’t so impressed.

In fairness, I think this is just an unfortunate passage of time situation. Even if you love a book, you can forget some of the important details before the release of the next novel in the series. I would have benefited from a re-read, but there are far too many books in the world to do that right now.

The story is very political, with a lot of clever intrigue and manipulations and backstabbing. Which I loved. However, again, I think this is some of the stuff that suffered from my memory lapse. I appreciate what the book does, and I think it’s very clever. Vespus is like Littlefinger, and it was amazing.

I did also like how Sorrow’s state of mind is so carefully explained to the readers. It’s good to be reminded that she is still barely an adult, and she’s trying to run a country. Even when you’ve been brought up to rule since birth, it still sounds like a tall order, and it was refreshing to see that Salisbury has actually explored that rather than just making her protagonist very confident and capable. I don’t see too much of this in YA at the moment (or at least, when I do the lack of confidence is just a momentary thing and they are actually really capable).

In terms of negatives, I wasn’t keen on the slightly larger cast of characters, again due to me not remembering much of what was going on. I did appreciate Charon, and some of Sorrow’s friends, but I kind of forgot most of them and there were one or two who were almost entirely unnecessary in this book. The magic and world-building too, could have done with a bit more fleshing out, especially since the politics of the whole novel overshadow much of these details.

Overall, I thought Song of Sorrow was okay. I’d give it:

There were moments when it was really good (I liked the banter between the characters and the confidence issues Sorrow goes through) but it just didn’t grab me like book one did, and I feel like it needed a re-read of State of Sorrow in order to truly grasp what was going on in this book, particularly as it drew closer to the ending.

Has anyone else read this book already or plans to? What do you all think of it? Let me know in the comment section down below ❤