ARC Book Review: Wonder Woman: Warbringer

Synopsis:

She will become one of the world’s greatest heroes: WONDER WOMAN. But first she is Diana, Princess of the Amazons. And her fight is just beginning. . . .

Diana longs to prove herself to her legendary warrior sisters. But when the opportunity finally comes, she throws away her chance at glory and breaks Amazon law—risking exile—to save a mere mortal. Even worse, Alia Keralis is no ordinary girl and with this single brave act, Diana may have doomed the world.

Alia just wanted to escape her overprotective brother with a semester at sea. She doesn’t know she is being hunted. When a bomb detonates aboard her ship, Alia is rescued by a mysterious girl of extraordinary strength and forced to confront a horrible truth: Alia is a Warbringer—a direct descendant of the infamous Helen of Troy, fated to bring about an age of bloodshed and misery.

Together, Diana and Alia will face an army of enemies—mortal and divine—determined to either destroy or possess the Warbringer. If they have any hope of saving both their worlds, they will have to stand side by side against the tide of war.

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Review

*I received a free advanced reader’s copy of this book at BookCon. This did not influence my review of this book in anyway. This is an honest review of the novel as I saw it. This novel will be released on August 29, 2017.*

If I’m being totally honest, I didn’t really have any interest in this book. If Leigh Bardugo didn’t write it, I probably wouldn’t have read it. I’ve never really been a big fan of Wonder Woman and still haven’t seen the new movie. I don’t know why, I just never got into her story and therefore didn’t really know much about her.

However, I decided to finally give this book a read because I’ve only seen good reviews of it thus far and I love the Six of Crows duology by Bardugo. Though this book started out slow, I ended up really enjoying it and couldn’t put it down.

The novel begins with Diana, who, if you are even less familiar with Wonder Woman than I am, will one day become Wonder Woman. Now, though, she’s the Princess of the Amazons, trying to prove herself to her sisters. Unlike all the other Amazons, Diana was created by her mother, Hippolyta, with the help of the gods. She was never mortal, like the other Amazons, and has never seen war, a man, or the human world in general.

That is until a boat crashes near Diana’s home, Themyscira, with Alia on it. Alia is a mortal human, but she’s also a Warbringer, meaning she’s a descendant of Helen of Troy. Alia’s power will bring an age of war so great that it will even reach Themyscira, a land of peace. That is, unless Alia and Diana can team up to stop it.

Diana learns what she must do to bring the age of Warbringers to an end, but of course it’s not something simple, and it leads Diana and Alia to the mortal lands, which led to a lot of action and adventure, but also some hilarity. Because Dianna has never been anywhere besides Themyscira, there was a lot she didn’t understand about the world, like cellphones or the fact that to “kick someone’s ass” didn’t mean you literally kick them in the ass.

I also liked that Alia is half-black and this novel looks at issues of race and how that shaped who Alia, and her older brother, Jason, were. The novel had a lot of diversity actually, with Alia’s best friend, Nim, being Indian and queer, and Jason’s best friend, Theo, also being a person of color.

Warbringer also had some twists that really surprised me, which I totally loved. I like being caught off guard and this book did that for me. There were also little bits of romance, which were just enough that I liked it, but it didn’t take away from the story at all.

Overall, I definitely recommend giving this book a read when it comes out. Even if you’re not all that familiar with Wonder Woman, like me, you can definitely still enjoy this novel. And if you love Wonder Woman, I think you’ll definitely like this novel.

Borrow or Buy: Buy!

Stars:

Favorite Line:

“It’s the people who never learn the word impossible who make history, because they’re the ones who keep trying.”

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