TL;DR The Selection but with even less forward movement
TBR #757, added Feb 12 2014
library ebook requested 8/21, #12 in queue; received 9/6 at #4
finished 9/14/16
I've been interested in The Jewel for a while, but never enough to buy a copy of it, and I don't know that my library has any physical copies of it. I happened to find it in the ebook system and figured "heck, let's do this."
I should mention right here that I'm learning I really don't like dystopians.
In looking around on Goodreads, I found a lot of people comparing The Jewel to The Selection series, and I totally agree with that. They read about the same -- Violet's narration was easy enough to read through without any issue, but I also didn't enjoy her voice as much as I wanted. She wasn't the most compelling narrator (but she was less annoying than America).
Honestly I felt like the world and overall concepts of the plot were underused or under-explored. There are so many questions I still have about how their world actually functions. (Though I will admit that two of them were answered by the end of the book.) I'm really tempted to pull out my AP Human Geo notebook from 11th grade and figure out if their country (?) would actually be sustainable as more than an idea.
I think the Auguries were a cool concept, but I don't think they were a good fit for The Jewel's story. There wasn't enough explanation for why they should fit into the story, and they didn't serve much of a purpose other than to make these girls ~special~. The story still could've functioned without the Auguries.
(Something else I found on Goodreads that's worth mentioning: how were these girls actually prepared for being surrogates if they have no idea what's gonna happen to their bodies?? Did they not get any health classes?? That seems like it'd be the number-one priority, especially if these girls are the royalty's only hope of having children that will survive. It would've made more sense for these girls to only learn about how to make those children practically inhumanly perfect.)
I think Violet was too idealistic and naive for the world she grew up in. Part of this might just be disbelief on my end that this system of theirs would last for hundreds of years without even rumors about what's going on.
Also, I find it hard to believe that the Duchess would wait so long to have Violet even start meeting the doctor. If this system really were as terrible as it was supposed to be, she and all the other ladies of the houses wouldn't have waited at all -- they would've started immediately and would've been even more ruthless.
Like, sure, all the women are snide to each other, but they weren't as evil as I thought they were supposed to be. I was expecting the surrogates and the companions to be treated the same as their servants. There's an excessive amount of money being spent on these girls and their lives aren't as bad as I was expecting; why would you pamper these girls and then wait months to start using them for what you bought them for? Well--Raven's life sucked. And the lot #200 girl, whatever her name was. Violet's life really wasn't bad considering she's known this was coming and was supposedly prepared for it.
The romance was poorly set up and the only attraction they had to each other was really that they were never allowed to have their own relationships otherwise. It was never good and I'm honestly glad that they got the result that they did -- the only reason they made it to the end of the book was to make it into a cliffhanger for the next book. They never should have lasted that long in their society.
Also, Ash was a poor excuse for a heartthrob character. He was bland. Their cliffhanger was contrived and honestly is just making me less interested in continuing than I had been before that last chapter.
The plot revolving Lucien was interesting but it wasn't as key to the overall story as I was hoping. Most of the story is the Duchess toting Violet around to social events, being saccharine one moment and Lady Tremaine the next, and Violet trying to get into as much trouble in the palace as she could. Nothing really happens other than her trysts with Ash, which were more annoying than anything.
I think the story could've been a lot better if there were more unrest going on, more than just Violet's "oh, I hate my life" and all the royal women trying to oust the Electress (or whatever they were trying to do against her). There was so much potential for an uprising, or at least a movement against the current system, both from the peasant classes and the royalty themselves. I find it really hard to believe that everyone in the circles outside the Bank just accepts this life, and that the royal women are just sitting there talking smack about the Electress without any other action. There was only one instance we saw of anyone rebelling against the system, and it was a passing glimpse at that.
It would've been a lot better to see more of what the heck Lucien was trying to scheme, but honestly, I have to agree with him 100% about not telling Violet everything, because she's an idiot.
I'm still not sure if I'm going to read The White Rose, because Goodreads is suggesting Violet and Ash are even more annoying and more useless, but I found The House of the Stone in my library system and I am planning on reading that. I think Raven's story has much more potential, based on the little glimpses we got through Violet's narration, and there were some ... divisive reviews on Goodreads that made me curious lol. I'm hoping that it's going to be grittier than The Jewel was.
(I never expected admitting to wanting more grit in a story.)
TL;DR I was disappointed that most of the story was filler, and that there wasn't much potential written in for anything to happen. There's not much to anticipate and Violet really didn't add any positive characteristics to the story as a whole.
CWs: loss of autonomy, abuse / torture (physical / mental), blood, injuries, and things along those lines. Blood loss is a very reoccurring CW.
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