Wonder Woman Warbringer by Leigh Bardugo

The Quick Cut: Two girls women work together to prevent war from breaking out across the globe (and discover a whole lot more is going on than meets the eye).

A Real Review:

I LOVED the Wonder Woman movie that came out this past year. It brought such a refreshing new take on the character while staying true to who she was in the comics (aka the originating material). So when I was in the airport a week ago and saw this book, I snapped it up and started reading.

My experience reading this book has been the opposite of the movie. Where the movie was so positive, refreshing, and a step forward - this feels like a real step back (if not two). When you break down the material as it was given, it feels more and more like a bit of a letdown.

The start and end of this story were easy to read and fairly fast paced. I found myself really in the story in these moments, but it only comprised a total of about 10% of the book. The other 90 feels very slow and in many areas almost like filler, especially in the city areas (trying to be as spoiler free as possible here).

At 364 pages, it's not only long - this feels excessively long and it definitely would have had better pacing if it was more like 200 pages instead. I dropped this book a lot out of disinterest and thus, reading it took FAR longer than my norm.

Now for the characters. As unfortunate as this sounds, I ended up really only liking our secondary characters, Theo and Nim. Their chemistry was off the charts adorable and I loved their banter between each other. It keep me reading in many cases. Jason I found interesting as the brother in charge of business, but definitely saw his story plot line coming.

Then there's Diana and Alia... our heroines here. I couldn't stand them and it bothered me how little chemistry there was between the these two. They're supposed to be working together for a common goal and never really make it on the same page. It's disappointing from a reader's perspective. Plus, they were very immature considering the book is classified as YA. Diana is highly insecure and shows it with what she says, all the way to the end of the book.

Like this gem of a line:

'But I almost failed!' Diana said, her mind reeling. 'The world was almost plunged into an age of warfare! What if I'd lost?'

Between that insecurity and the awkwardness with Alia, it just didn't seem like these two were appropriately developed out.

A major letdown of a book for a heroine who's known for being smart, strong, and above all else - inspiring. Here, she's insecure and a bad example.

My rating: 2.5 out of 5