The Chaos of Stars by Kiersten White

[nikki_p]

The Chaos of Stars by Kiersten White is about teenage Isadora, daughter of the Egyptian goddess Isis and Egyptian god Osiris. She’s angry with her mother for not making her immortal like her brother Horus, and refuses to worship her parents even though they don’t have many worshipers left and are in danger of disappearing. The moment Isadora gets the chance to move to America with her other mortal brother, she jumps on a plane, ignoring her mother’s warnings of an oncoming danger and darkness enveloping her dreams. Once in San Diego, she quickly makes friends and attempts to forget the family she left behind, but it isn’t that easy. In no time, the darkness catches up to her, along with the entanglements of new emotions she begins to feel for a handsome boy named Ry.

Right off the back, I disliked the writing style of this book. Books written in first person are very common now, especially in YA, but I don’t think every single young adult novel should be wrtten in first person. This particular book was painful to read at times. I cringed having to read every single one of Isadora’s thoughts. They were so immature and naive. Of course, that was the point of the book, but it gets hard to follow when you yourself start to see how annoying the protagonist really is. The character development at the end wasn’t even enough to justify her, to be honest it wasn’t even character development. She simply finally saw the truth and because of her brattiness was almost too late. Her personality was just so…ugh I can’t even find a word for it. It was all over the place I suppose. I don’t understand how the daughter of gods that has literally known nothing but magic and impossible things, cannot spot danger right off the back. She was so immature and juvenile that she literally had to be physically attacked to finally break through her thick skull. And her weird hobby of interior design? It made no sense. It didn’t match her personality at all and the parts where she was going into that “interior design” mode were so pathetic. It all felt so fake and forced. It’s like she simply HAD to have this interesting little quirk and interior design was, apparently, the best choice. In reality, it didn’t fit at all and the book could have done without it.

The way the gods and goddesses were handled was slightly offensive. First of all, this idea that nobody worships the old gods needs to stop. Many, many, people still do. And I feel as if the entire book was mocking them, making them seem like a joke. Isadora’s family aside, I also disliked her friends. Tyler and her boyfriend annoyed me immensely, they seemed so forced and fake. And don’t even get me started on Ry. I literally rolled my eyes the moment he was introduced. His entire personality and everything he did made me cringe. An unbelievably handsome, anti-social, greek poet that comes off as creepy at times. So ridiculous, I can see right through every character. They were so transparent.

I honestly don’t know what it was that made me want to keep reading. Sometimes I’d sit down to read it and then when I felt like I had enough I had read a huge chunk out of it. It’s definitely a fast read if you can get past all of the negatives. At this point, I can’t remember any positives though. I am giving it two out of five stars because I did, somehow, finish it. So I guess it wasn’t completely unbearable. I don’t really recommend it to anyone, probably the best thing about it is that it’s a stand alone novel, not part of a trilogy. That way, I don’t feel obligated to read anymore of this story.