Review: These Rebel Waves by Sara Raasch

These Rebel Waves by Sara Raasch
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I received an ARC of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss+ in exchange for an honest review.  This came out on August 7th, and I am horribly late with getting my review up.  To be fair I just finished it today, I got really behind at the beginning of the month with my reading.

This took me a while to get into, the story is slower paced than Raasch's previous series but I eventually got engaged in the storyline and there were quite a few plot twists towards the end that I really didn't see coming. I tend to have a hard time with books that follow more than one perspective and this was no different. This is a 3 person narrative, which is not my favorite. This also wasn't what I was expecting. I was expecting a super action packed pirate story, filled with magical abilities. There are some pirates but they aren't doing pirate stuff. Most of the story takes place on land. The magic system is based on plants and when ingested they give the person abilities for a time. The plot is full of political intrigue and mainly focused on the the characters trying to keep the peace between the warring factions. Overall, I liked the story, enough to continue the series. It ends on a pretty major cliffhanger and I'd like to know what happens to the characters and where the plotline ends up.

The story follows Lu, she is a politician, and a former soldier and spy of the Grace Loray revolution. Her parents were revolutionaries and turned her into a tool for their war. Now they sit on the council of Grace Loray, an island once ruled by a harsh religion, but is now a port full of magic, trade, and commerce where people of all nationalities are free to come and go as they please. Well atleast that is what the council tells themselves. Today Grace Loray is overrun with factions of pirates who helped the rebels win the war against Argrid. The council made the pirates promises that they feel aren't being kept and the pirates aren't happy. Lu doesn't want to see the island come to war again, but the council is working on a treaty with Argrid to mend their former differences and it is causing unrest with the pirates and within the council.

Vex, aka Devereux Bell, is a stream raider kind of like a pirate but where most raiders have allied themselves with a faction or syndicate based on their nationality, Vex is allied to no one but himself and his crew. Vex like many other raiders deals in the magical plants that can be found in an around Grace Loray. Vex finds himself a pawn in several different schemes and he must finally choose a side.

Benat is the prince of Argrid, where magic is evil and life is dictated by their religion. The religion is centered around the Pious God, and the King who dictates the Pious God's desires on the human plane. Benat watched his beloved uncle and cousin burned for the use of magic as a child, and when his father asks him to use magic to cure the sick, he feels like a heretic. Basically every misstep is punished in Argrid, and the wrong-doer must be cleansed to gain favor of the Pious God. As Benat works on a cure for the sickness, he realized there is a much more sinister plot afoot and he's not sure who's side he wants to be on any longer.

There isn't much to the magic system, it comes from the plants which are harvested from the waterways of the island.  The abilities of the plants are fairly well explained.  The world building was decent, and the characters atleast in the case of Lu and Vex were well developed.  I thought Benat could have been a bit more developed, his perspective eventually tied in nicely but it felt unnecessary in the beginning.  I did want a bit more on some of the side characters and the religion of Argrid.


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