Book Review: Glass Sword (Red Queen Series) #2 *Contains Spoilers*

Author: Victoria Aveyard
Release date: February 9th 2016
Dates read: August 4th – August 10th 2019
Book Format: Paperback
Star Rating: 4 and a half out of 5 stars

Synopsis on Goodreads

If there’s one thing Mare Barrow knows, it’s that she’s different.

Mare’s blood is red – the colour of common folk – but her Silver ability, the power to control lightning, has turned her into a weapon that the royal court tries to control.

The crown calls her an impossibility, a fake, but as she makes her escape from the prince and friend who betrayed her, Mare uncovers something startling: she is not the only one of her kind.

Pursued by the Silver king, Mare sets out to find and recruit other Red and Silver fighters to join in the struggle against her oppressors.

But Mare finds herself on a deadly path, at risk of becoming exactly the kind of monster she is trying to defeat. Will she shatter under the weight of the lives that are the cost of rebellion? Or have treachery and betrayal hardened her forever?

~

Words can’t describe how much i loved this book, it absolutely blew me away with how well written it was, but i did give it only 4 and a half stars just because i knew that Mare would become Maven’s prisoner a few chapters from the end.

When we left Red Queen Mare and Cal were about to be executed in the Bowl of Bones, thanks to Maven and Queen Elara manipulating Cal to kill his own father, the King,  but they both managed to escape with the help of the Scarlet Guard and Mare’s older brother Shade who she believed had died thanks to the King. Throughout the book Mare and the Scarlet Guard have been searching all over for ‘Newbloods’ Reds with the abilities of Silvers, just like Mare in hopes of building an army against Maven and his followers. All seems to be going well, but Maven is always a step ahead, seemingly managing to get to some of the Newbloods first and either kill them or take them prisoner in order to experiment on them. Throughout all of this, whenever Maven gets to the Newbloods first, he always leaves a note for Mare, taunting her and saying that he will have her eventually as he is a man of his word. Mare keeps the notes as she misses the Maven that she got to know while she was living as Mareena is the castle, but during this she is also hiding feelings for Cal.
In the end Mare finds out that Newbloods and traitorous Silvers are all being held in a prison and she hatches a plan to save everyone, it all starts off well but Queen Elara is visiting prison an finds out that Mare and the Scarlet Guard have infiltrated the prison. She finds Mare but not before she and the others are able to release all those being held. Elara tries to either kill or take Mare hostage but Mare is able to kill the queen and after taking her corpse back to The Tuck, she makes a mass wide message in which she taunts Maven by showing Elara’s head on the video. Earlier on the book Mare finds out the children as young as 15 are being forced into the War and going to The Choke were they will most certainly die. At the end of the book, Mare stages a sort of rescue mission to The Choke with several members of the Scarlet Guard to save the 5000 children but somehow Maven knew she would be there and after nearly killing Cal and Kilhorn, Mare offers herself up to Maven for their lives. During the epilogue, Mare is taken back to the castle by Maven where he places a collar and leash around her neck, to symbolise that he will never let her go again.

I can’t wait to read King’s Cage and find out what happens to Mare, in a way i’m hoping that she can get through to Maven as the guy that was during the most of Red Queen was actually a really nice guy and i was hoping something would happen between him and Mare, but he turned out to be a real horrible guy and crushed my dreams lol. But once again this was extremely well written by Victoria and it kept me hooked every time i picked the book up.