Books | Review: The Hurricane Wars by Thea Guanzon

Name: The Hurricane Wars (The Hurricane Wars #1)

Author: Thea Guanzon 

Publisher: HarperVoyager

Date published: October 2023

Genre: Fiction, adult, fantasy, romance

Pages: 472

Rating: 3/5

All Talasyn has ever known are the Hurricane Wars. An orphan of the struggle, she uses the power of light to fight for her people against the Night Empire.
All Alaric has ever known is darkness. The son of the Night Emperor and their deadliest weapon, he wields terrifying shadow magic to crush the rebellion.
Then he sees Talasyn, his sworn enemy burning bright across the battlefield. The moment they clash their lives are changed forever.
Now a greater threat is rising and only they can stop it.
The coming storm threatens to destroy everything. If they don’t destroy each other first...

- Goodreads.

There was a lot of exposition and explanation of the world and storyline at the beginning of the book that did make it slower to get through, and although it did get better once we got into the flow of the story, I did find that in general there was a lot more telling than showing and it could have been balanced better. There was also the problem that when there were action scenes or other complicated descriptions of what was happening, it was sometimes hard to picture or understand so sometimes it could be confusing.

However, there were some good descriptions and I thought the setting and the world were all very creative and interesting to learn about. The way the magic worked and the ships that were used in the war were very inventive concepts.

Even though I did think the exposition could have been done better, the plot was still interesting to follow and I was always curious to find out what would happen next, and I am definitely curious enough to read the next book.

I did like the characters and mostly understood them, but did find them frustrating sometimes. I think especially with the main character Talasyn, her actions did not always make sense to me.

While this book definitely had its flaws, it was still an interesting story with a lot of potential and I can imagine the sequel will be quite exciting.