#but if any group throughout human history has had a singular Evil impact on the world

[tshepiso-reads-books]

I Should've DNF'd It | Wonder Woman: Warbringer

Started: December 21st, 2018

Finished: December 24th, 2019

I don’t have much to say about Wonder Woman: Warbringer [Goodreads]. The strongest emotion I can attach to it is boredom, with a tinge of disappointment. I was expecting a bit more from Leigh Bardugo, but sadly this book didn't live up to expectations.

Wonder Woman: Warbringer follows Diana the princess of Themyscira as she goes on a quest to stop an apocalyptic doomsday event by curing our other protagonist Alia of the Warbringer curse that destins her to cause the worst war in human history.

That summary is the first problem I had with this book; the plot was too generic to interest me. The bulk of the story was a bland journey to Greece as masked goons periodically attacked our rag-tag group of teens. I never felt any real tension throughout the story despite the word ending stakes surround the plot. Even the third act twist, which I will admit I did not see coming, didn’t affect me for very long.

Diana was an interesting character, initially. The story failed to build upon her internal conflict in an engaging way. I was fascinated by Diana; she was hungry to prove herself,  but extremely naive. I thought these traits would lead her into making interesting choices but Diana lacked real agency. The plot seemed to drag her from place to place and outside of the inciting incident of the story she never had to make any choices that informed who she was.

Alia was less interesting than Diana from the beginning and I found the dual perspective unnecessary given as Alia’s perspective added little to the overall story. She did little to push the plot forward and she definitely had no impact on me. I did appreciate the rep of a black main character though.

I had serious problems with the Warbringer curse as a concept. Not only does it lead to the most generic “We must break the curse!” plot, the idea that in every generation since Helen of Troy a teenage girl was the cause of all death and destruction didn't sit comfortably with me. Making a singular teenage girl responsible for all of the destruction in the world feels icky, robs the girl of control over her life, and has a "women are the cause of the world's evil" vibe.

Stars

🌟🌟🌟

I don’t want to give off the vibe that I’m ranting about this book. Honestly, it's not that bad, but it wasn’t all that good either. I wouldn’t dissuade anyone from reading it, but I’ll just say the movie was better.