The Heart of Betrayal (Remnant Chronicles)

 The Heart of Betrayal

French edition : La Martinière

American edition : Macmillan Publishing Group

Number of pages : 470

Genre : Epic Fantasy

Publication year : 2015 (for the USA), 2022 (for France)

Author : Mary E Pearson

Summary

    After being captured by Kaden and his peers; Lia is brought to the Kozimar’s realm. She is imprisoned with her fears and her doubts. She doesn’t know what to do because she has been betrayed by Rafe and also by Kaden. However, both seem to want to help her despite huge risks they are exposing to. Besides of all of this, Lia has to deal with the Kozimar’s wishes and plans and the fact that she is supposed to have a superpower… 

Criticism

    First of all, this volume is another firm-favorite (like all the novels of Mary E Pearson you’ll tell me, ahah). There are a lot of reasons why I adore this book and I’ll tell you why (that’s why I’m here !).

    First the story. We start reading with the knowledge of what happened in the end of the first volume. We have many questions and assumptions about what is going to happen. The suspense level is already high at the beginning because there’s many stakes for Lia, but also for Kaden, Rafe, Pauline, the realms, ultimately for all the people of this story. Besides, the tension is growing up all along the book. Indeed, we have different points of view but we don’t have the link between them. It’s our turn to make our hypotheses and guess what is the next thing that will make a big turnaround in the book. To me, this is a really good point because we have clues about future actions of the story but we are surprised by what is happening all the same ! Moreover, the end of the book is terrible for us. In fact, there’s a ENORMOUS turnaround; we don’t know what to look close because there’s lots of things that are happening at the same time. It’s like if one action triggered another and so on; there are big consequences. The end of this book is for the most powerful climax moment !!!! We absolutely want to know the rest.

    Then characters. This is just crazy, but in a good way. In fact, every character succeed in surprising us, even the ones we know the best like Lia. Characters act with us like they do in their realm. It means that they all have two faces because if they don’t, they cannot survive in this world. This engage in double dealing is something very important in this book because it gives suspense and surprise, but also because it implies us in their world. We have to adapt ourselves to their way of thinking and living if we want to understand them and guess what is going to happen. It’s even like a game for us; it’s funny to try to guess why characters act like that, to guess if what they said was something that they really meant to say or if it was something said in order to survive in this world… If I can give you an advice, I would tell you to pay attention to all the characters, their acts and their words, you could be very surprised ! Moreover, there is still this love triangle between Kaden, Rafe and Lia. During this volume, it takes more and more importance. It also gives a lot of suspense to the plot. It’s something which manipulates this plot. A tension between those three characters is created and it intensified all along the story. That’s the reason why we cannot make a choice between Kaden and Rafe; we appreciate them more and more through the story. They are both different but each one has his own personality, his own sensibility. Nevertheless, thanks to them we can understand better Lia’s feeling and actions. It’s a way to know her too. In fact she acts different with both, sometimes she shows her real face and sometimes she tries to hide it; but it doesn’t work because she is with Rafe or Kaden.

Final Conclusion

It’s very long to wait for the third volume !!!!!

So are you going to read it ?

The song

Wicked Game by Chris Isaac, because it represents perfectly the story of Lia with Kaden, and with the people of Komizar’s realm. You can also listen to the cover of Maëlle which is just incredible.

My note : 12/10

Characters : 2/2         My taste: 3/2

Story : 5/4                Originality: 2/2