Review of The House of the Four Winds by Mercedes Lacky and James Mallory

Title/Author: The House of the Four Winds (One Dozen Daughters #1) by Mercedes Lacky and James Mallory
Publisher/Date published: Tor Books, August 5th 2014
How I got this book: received it from the publisher through NetGalley
Buy this book at: The Book Depository

Goodreads summary: The rulers of tiny, impoverished Swansgaard have twelve daughters and one son. While the prince’s future is assured, his twelve sisters must find their own fortunes.

Disguising herself as Clarence, a sailor, Princess Clarice intends to work her way to the New World. When the crew rebels, Clarice/Clarence, an expert with rapier and dagger, sides with the handsome navigator, Dominick, and kills the cruel captain.

Dominick leads the now-outlawed crew in search of treasure in the secret pirate haven known as The House of Four Winds. They encounter the sorceress Shamal, who claims Dominick for her own—but Clarice has fallen hard for Dominick and won’t give him up without a fight.

In theory The House of the Four Winds should have been my next favourite novel. Cause it has lots of things I love: fantasy, woman pretending to be a man, pirates. So I went in expecting to love it, but it didn't do much for me unfortunately.

I really don't understand, cause I really liked Mercedes Lackey's writing in The Fairy Godmother, but I just never felt like I was really invested in the story. I never really felt that the stakes were high and things were dangerous and the story just sorta mellowed on towards the end and then that was it and I was like where's my excitement? I wasn't really feeling the romance either and had expected a little more outrage or just SOMETHING at the revelation that Clarence was in fact a Clarice. I mean, that should be kinda shocking right? I would be shocked to find out one of my friends was actually a woman instead of a guy.

Also, I was kinda angry at the whole crew for not rebelling against their captain sooner, cause one awful thing that happened could have easily been prevented and it wasn't and then they were oh NOW let's rebel and just WTF guys? Also, in the end they got rid of that annoying woman who was trying to get them killed too easily.

But the main problem was that I just wasn't sucked into the story and was kinda bored actually. Which is a shame, cause it had serious potential to be awesome.

My rating: 2 stars