Book: We Who Will Die by Stacia Stark
Reviewed by Anonymous
Rating: 4/5
4 stars - with the caveat that I've realized over time that I'm not generally a big fan of Roman inspired stories, but I LOVE Stacia Stark, so still wanted to give this one a go. I really enjoyed this!
We got into the world building without it being a huge brain dump, and were able to pretty quickly get into the action and plot. It didn't feel incredibly heavily Roman inspired (which was a great thing for me). The inspiration absolutely is there (the fighters are called gladians), but it doesn't feel too heavy-handed with the inspiration generally.
For the first third or so of the book, I wasn't entirely absorbed and sucked in, but was definitely intrigued, enough to keep going. I'd seen some other reviews that mentioned it really picking up around the 35% mark, and they were not wrong! I was generally having a good time from there on. We don't get our first spice until ~65%, so definitely getting some time to build.
My biggest complaint was that I had a really hard time keeping up with all the names and who everybody was with the story, which made it slightly harder to follow. It was also not the fastest read I've ever had.
This audiobook does have duet narration and is generally enjoyable, although not my all time favorite narrators.
Overall I enjoyed this story and am glad I picked it up! Thanks to Stacia, the publisher, and NetGalley for providing an ARC of this book.