Audiobook Review – Beneath the Citadel by Destiny Soria, Narrated by Rebecca Gibel (2/5 stars)

Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Length: 13 hours and 36 minutes
Publisher:‎ Tantor Audio
Release Date: October 09, 2018
ASIN: B07HMKSZ8H
Stand Alone or Series: Stand Alone
Source: Borrowed audiobook from Audible.com
Rating: 2/5 stars

“In the city of Eldra, people are ruled by ancient prophecies. For centuries, the high council has stayed in power by virtue of the prophecies of the elder seers. After the last infallible prophecy came to pass, growing unrest led to murders and an eventual rebellion that raged for more than a decade.

In the present day, Cassa, the orphaned daughter of rebels, is determined to fight back against the high council, which governs Eldra from behind the walls of the citadel. Her only allies are no-nonsense Alys, easygoing Evander, and perpetually underestimated Newt.

Cassa struggles to come to terms with the legacy of rebellion her dead parents have left her, and the fear that she may be inadequate to shoulder the burden. But by the time Cassa and her friends uncover the mystery of the final infallible prophecy, it may be too late to save the city – or themselves.”

Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I borrowed this on ebook through the library.

Thoughts: I stopped reading this about 65% of the way through. I listened to this on audiobook and just could not get through it. Initially, it did feel a bit “Six of Crows” like…with the troubled characters and the heist type of feel. However, everything about this fell short for me. The characters were all very stereotypical and we jump around between them willy nilly; this was very hard to follow on the audiobook. In addition to that, we jumped between the past and present constantly, and that was hard to follow as well.

The story follows four character Cassa, Newt, Evander, and Alys. Alys and Evander are siblings, Cass is the daughter of revolutionaries, and Newt is the son of a traitor to the revolutionaries. We hop between all four of them and jump between past and present as well. This is not indicated well in the audiobook so it’s very hard to follow. We meet up with them right after they have been arrested for trying to get beneath the Citadel and start the story as they are breaking out of jail. From there, they end up embroiled in a plot to either help or kill the monster below the city I an effort to overthrown the council that runs the city.

The writing here felt very juvenile, so many turns of phrase in here are eyerollingly over the top “she was born with rebellion in her blood” and many others. There was a lot of cliche and overused phrasing in this book. The plot was incredibly predictable as well. The characters initially seemed like they might be interesting, but they didn’t really feel like they had much depth or interacted well together in the book as the story went on. I haven’t been reading a lot of YA lately, but this is definitely no “Six of Crows”.

The only intriguing part of this is the ability of characters to alter and steal memories. This also gets a bit confusing to follow but is an interesting concept; if not very well done here.

I kept struggling to make time to finish listening to this, but I just couldn’t stay engaged in the story. Even while packing up the house for moving I found myself turning on this audiobook and realizing that it was just background noise and I wasn’t really listening much at all anymore. At that point I decided it was time to stop.

My Summary (2/5): Overall I was disappointed in this book and don’t understand why it has been on so many best fantasy lists. I felt like the story was written in a very juvenile way that was confusing to follow, the characters were shallow, and the plot was predictable. The only thing that was interesting in this book was the idea of using memories as weapons, but that wasn’t enough to keep me drawn in to the story. I wouldn’t recommend this and won’t be checking out future books by this author.