The Diviners Series: Sort of a Rant Review

*This review contains spoilers for the entire Diviners series*

DISCLAIMER: I would give this series 4 stars overall (maybe that’s a bit generous), so clearly I didn’t dislike it. I actually had a pretty good time reading it. For some reason though, this review is overwhelmingly negative? – I guess most of my problems with it were cancelled out by the fact that it was enjoyable overall. This review isn’t meant to hate on anyone whose opinions differ from mine! I'm also so sorry for any formatting issues, I couldn't figure out how to fix it.

Over the last 2 months, I’ve been reading the Diviners series, because I realised reading classics is just slowly taking away my will to live and I’ve been completely out of the loop for the past two years on what’s popular. Six of Crows, I’m coming for you next. My opinions are pretty mixed, and I have a lot to talk about, so without further ado, it’s time to say what I think about each book.

THE DIVINERS:

I hyped this up to myself so much in my head that when it came to actually reading it, I was disappointed. The overall plot and mystery were quite confusing to me, and seemed pretty generic, so it didn’t really grab me. The elements that attracted me were things everyone seems to agree Libba Bray does very well – the setting, and the characters (I’ll talk a bit more about both of these things later).

The whole thing was kind of boring because I was so uninvolved in the mystery. I’m a big idiot, so the plot really has to be spelled out to me, and it wasn’t. What kept me going was Evie – unpopular opinion, but I really liked her in the first book. I thought she was funny and charming, and it showed good characterisation that she was flawed. She brought all the life to the narration, and without her, I probably would’ve put the book down in the first 50 pages.

The scenes in the museum with Evie, Will, Sam and Jericho were easily the best bits. Even after finishing the series, I feel nostalgic looking back on them. These scenes prompted me to read the next book – I hoped for more like this, especially once the stupid mystery was over.

Memphis and Theta weren’t done well at all, in my opinion. They didn’t have anything interesting going for them until far too late in the story, and a big downfall was that we didn’t find out Theta’s powers. But at the same time, it felt like Libba Bray thought she was being really sneaky, and we all assumed Theta didn’t have powers? Except it was obvious? You can’t have a book which literally switches through perspectives of different Diviners and not expect us to figure out Theta was a Diviner.

Loads of people loved her in this first book for being such a badass, but I thought she was kind of boring. It’s been over a month since I’ve read it so maybe I’m forgetting something, but as far as I remember, she didn’t have much of a plotline in the first book; it’s allowed, especially because she just acted as a supporting character, but basically I don’t understand why everyone loved her so much in the first book. She also didn’t really have any chemistry with Memphis, there was no build-up to their relationship, and I think that because it started off so badly, I couldn’t ever really get into their relationship, even by the end of the series.

 

LAIR OF DREAMS:

I loved this book an unhealthy amount. It was my favourite by a mile. Not only does it follow my two favourite characters of the series (Ling and Henry) but it includes fake dating, one of my favourite tropes. This was about the time I started to root for Sam and Evie to hell and back, and hate Jericho with a passion.

I was really apprehensive going into this, because I’d come to love the little gang we already knew, and I’d heard it followed Ling and Henry – two new characters. I am so glad we got these two perspectives. They’re such a perfect mix, Ling’s seriousness with Henry’s light-hearted humour, and I loved the exploration of Chinatown and the treatment of Chinese immigrants. It’s something I’ve never seen presented in American literature, and I remember when I learned about 1920s America, I learned about racism to Black people, discrimination against the Irish and Italians, but I never heard about the Chinese experience. It was a really refreshing perspective to see.

If the mystery in the first book disappointed me, this one blew me away. I was less bothered about the people dying (someone tell Libba Bray she only needs to show us like, twice) because after reading the same description of someone dying in their sleep for what felt like the 30^th time, I was over it. I absolutely adored the descriptions of the dream world, and Wai Mae, and how slowly we start to realise something is wrong alongside Ling. This mystery really worked in a way the first book failed to.

The characterisation was brilliant, the setting was impressive again, and the setup for the third book with all the diviners coming together was really well executed. Boy do I wish I’d stopped there.

 

 

BEFORE THE DEVIL BREAKS YOU:

I can get behind the first half of this book. I didn’t love it, but I liked it. After reading the second half, however, I was falling asleep, and I wish I could just cut about 200 pages out.

As an audience, we were all excited to see the diviners come together as a group – after all, we’d been sitting watching their separate perspectives for ages, and it felt like a huge build-up to a tense, exciting moment where we’d see them all together.

Spoiler alert: it wasn’t.

For me, the problem was that Libba Bray didn’t know how to coordinate her characters as a group, so either resorted to letting Evie do all the talking, or splitting them immediately back off into smaller groups. There was so much potential for different character dynamics, and new things to explore, but she just fell back onto her safety net of the old relationships.

Even though I wanted to see them all together, it was done so badly that it actually came as a relief when they separated back off, especially at the asylum. I’m not sure if I loved or hated that scene – on the one hand, Isaiah and Theta? Chef’s kiss. What a duo. I still wasn’t a fan of Memphis and Theta, but exploring her relationship with her black boyfriend’s little brother who doesn’t trust her? That’s the angst I’m here for.

On the other hand, it was sort of stupid. I liked seeing the characters react to danger, but couldn’t the danger have been a bit more thrilling? The ghosts were so non-threatening, and they were explained so badly, and didn’t even link to the other two mysteries (more on this later). The scene with the King of Crows should’ve scared me, and it didn’t really.

Everything was just downhill from here. I can’t explain the conflict of this book to save my life. Conor Flynn was captured by the King of Crows, then they spent the whole book trying to save him with no idea of how, so they just blasted ghosts until he died? And it had no impact on any other events? I was sitting there like, “are you telling me I had to read pages and pages of mind-numbing ghost murdering with no explanation of why, for it to go absolutely nowhere?”

Another annoying thing – Jericho. We all hate him at this point, and I was so glad when they shipped him off to Jake Marlowe because I was like finally, we got rid of him!

I was wrong!

Easily the most problematic part of this book was Jericho’s attempt to sexually assault Evie. Everyone was rooting for her and Sam, including Evie herself – there was nothing really pushing Evie to be with Jericho apart from her completely unfounded, uncharacteristic attraction to him. The fact that Libba Bray felt she had to use sexual assault to make Jericho an unlikable character was a horrible choice – WE ALL. ALREADY. HATED HIM.

Don’t get me wrong, I think sexual assault is a very important topic to talk about, but these issues are personal and traumatising and very real, and need to be dealt with in a sensitive way. You shouldn’t just throw it into a story to fix a love triangle; that’s bad writing.

The characterisation also just became really bad in this book, and clunky as hell. As a series progresses, we should be able to see more complexity of character, and the small nuances that make your characters so special. Instead, we just got in-your-face sentences basically affirming that Evie is self-centred, Mabel is insecure, and Ling likes physics. We know all this already; we want to hear about their upbringings and experience that make them like this.

Did anyone else find it really weird when there was that chapter where they all had sex with each other? I felt so uncomfortable reading it, not because I have an issue with sex scenes in general, but because it felt like Libba Bray was just really horny while she wrote it, and it was really weird how she jumped from couple to couple to show them all having sex or thinking about sex – what are the chances they’d all be doing that? Especially in conservative 1920s America, with all the scandal around sex before marriage?

A scene I liked a lot was Isaiah’s realisation that racism was a real thing, and that he would always be hated because of his skin colour. It was relatable, and accurate – it’s something I and all young children of colour have to go through, and I could empathise so strongly with his emotions. The only thing that gave away that this was clearly written by a white woman was the fact that he’s 11, and only just realised racism was real? I was 4 when I first experienced racism. Not to mention that this is 1920s America, when things were a million times worse, so there’s no chance he managed to live 11 years without realising racism is a thing, when it was literally shoved into his face at every corner.

Overall, I was excited to read the last book just because I thought there’d finally be some real conflict, and a resolution to everything that was built up – especially with Project Buffalo. I was also ready for some hardcore emotions – grief at Mabel and Will’s deaths, fear and desperation, the joy of seeing Sam reunite with his mother.

 

THE KING OF CROWS:

WOULD IT HAVE BEEN TOO MUCH TO ASK TO JUST GET THOSE EMOTIONS I ASKED FOR? THE RESOLUTION I WAS PROMISED?

Apparently.

Somehow, even though her best friend and uncle died, Evie barely feels any sadness. All her sadness is so painfully manufactured at convenient times, and it doesn’t seem real at all. She forgets about Mabel until the plot requires her to remember, and we hardly touch on Uncle Will at all. We don’t even get to see Jericho grieve for Will, even though he was his adopted father. Sam’s reunion with his mother is the most painfully robotic thing in the world. I want to shake him, and say, “you thought she was dead! For 10 years! Give me something to work with!”

Part of it felt like Libba Bray sacrificed her characterisation and setting to focus more on the plot, failing to realise that no one was reading her books for the plot because it’s always been a disappointment, and she should keep trying to exaggerate the bits she’s good at. Unfortunately, she sacrificed all the good bits without improving anything else, which resulted in (you guessed it), a shit book!

All this being said, I actually have a very controversial positive opinion which is that I enjoyed the first half a fair bit. Most people hated how Libba Bray took the characters out of New York, when setting was something she’d done well throughout, but I was glad for the change. There comes a point where you have to open your story up a bit, especially when it’s about 2400 pages in total and really drags at points. Everyone also complained about her splitting the characters back up, but it was a relief for me purely because she’s proven she can’t write them well as a group. I loved the opportunity to explore some unlikely combinations, like Memphis and Henry, Ling and Jericho, and of course Theta and Isaiah (SUCH a good duo. I can’t stress this enough.)

Even though it was interesting to see Ling and Jericho, I absolutely despise the situation they were thrown into. Fucking kill Jericho at this point, he isn’t a diviner so I don’t know why he was presented as one. It was clumsily justified as having something to do with the serum, but we all know Bray just wanted to redeem him somehow, especially since she was going to kill him off. As well as this, Ling and Alma just aren’t right for each other. Why does Ling even need a romantic plotline – she’d be a perfect asexual character!

For me, the big difference between plotlines I liked and ones I didn’t was the drive, and planning behind it. The reason I enjoyed the first half of this book was because the characters had a clear goal in mind – get to Bountiful – and an idea of how they were going to achieve it. The thing that was so shaky in the second half was that even though their aim was to defeat the King of Crows, there was no explanation of how they would do it. It didn’t even make sense while it was happening.

Once again, in the second half I could’ve cut out so much of the rubbish. Who cares about farming montages, or watching Isaiah play with cats? I don’t want to see my badass group of characters doing sweet fuck-all for hundreds of pages. The threat of Sarah Beth Olsen was enough to make me scared, but not for the reason Libba Bray seemed to want – unlike with Wai Mae, it took me about 5 seconds to figure out her backstory, and most of the anxiety came from worrying about Isaiah. It didn’t make sense how utterly stupid the characters were – why did it take so long for Evie to read something of hers?

Possibly the most infuriating part was that after Evie discovers Sarah Beth is working for the King of Crows, and Isaiah is likely in terrible danger, she stops trying to find him just because Henry says they have a problem, which results in Isaiah’s death. Why didn’t she keep looking for him? And why didn’t she feel guilty afterwards? Where was any human emotion?

I was just getting angrier and angrier. Memphis’s reaction was so weird and underexplained, and didn’t seem to factor into the plot at all. He gave up his healing powers to get Isaiah back, and ended up neither getting Isaiah back nor losing his healing powers. The whole plot of the end felt like Libba Bray wrote it without even thinking about it beforehand, just let the wind take her, and then didn’t edit it at all, because what the fuck even happened?

Let me run it down: Memphis trades his healing powers for Isaiah’s life, and for some reason nothing happens on either end. Bill Johnson kills Sarah Beth (which was my favourite part of the book by far, I love Bill’s character arc, which I’ll get to). Somehow they run into Jake Marlowe and are hooked up to the Eye of Providence, with no plan of how to defeat the King of Crows. They kill Miss Addie (?) who is the most useless character in the book, and has no relevance to the main plot. Evie makes peace with Mabel, who apparently then takes control of the army of the dead (??) but this also doesn’t impact anything. Memphis ‘heals the breach’ (I’m still unsure what this means). Jericho sacrifices himself for a reason which isn’t ever explained. Jake Marlowe magically just dies. The end?

Wait no, not the end, because this book isn’t done raising my blood pressure. I thought Isaiah’s death was unnecessary when it happened, because he’s one of my favourite characters, but I was still devastated because I love him so much. Obviously, the other characters’ weirdly empty reactions didn’t give me much to work with, but I like to feel I made up for it myself. The ONE WAY you can ensure I’ll be angry about a character death is resurrect them with no real reason. I can accept Harry Potter – that was necessary. Anyone else doesn’t get a pass.

But for real, I was actually laughing when Isaiah was resurrected because it was so stupid. The fact that all he had to do was say to the King of Crows, “you are nothing” and he just crumbled. Are you telling me that the overarching villain, the undefeatable evil, can’t handle a verbal insult?? The diviners should’ve just stuck him into a primary school playground and he’d be gone in moments.

Did it remind anyone else of the scene in IT: Chapter 2 where they just call the clown a “little clown” until he gets so small he turns into a baby? It was the same level of stupid. Side note: I laughed so hard I cried at that scene, and it was in a cinema.

I usually hate epilogues, but I didn’t have many complaints with this one. I quite liked the idea of each character getting closure, and of course I was delighted about Sam and Evie getting married. It all seemed pretty accurate to each character (*cough* unlike Mockingjay *cough*). My only problem was the fact that they all lost their powers after, because it didn’t really make any sense. This is something I see a lot in urban fantasy – all the characters lose their magic after the main events – and there’s not much point to it. Diviners existed before Marlowe’s Eye of Providence, so that can’t have been what was giving them powers. What would be wrong with the characters learning to live with their powers as part of their lives?

Overall, these last two books were really the downfall of the series. It felt like Libba Bray thought she’d established herself enough with the first two to stop trying, and it was all written lazily. I feel like she missed the memo of ‘always keep improving’ because they read like no effort was put into them.

This has already been such a long review, but now I’m going to talk about some overall good and bad things about the series, because I’m not done with my thoughts yet.

 

GOOD THINGS:

Sam and Evie – their relationship was one of the best I’ve read in a while. It’s a shame Jericho had to be involved as some sort of conflict, because he’s the worst, and I think there was enough conflict in their mutual desire to not show any feelings for each other. I loved the scene where they finally got together, and the proposal was so sweet – one of the only good bits in the fourth book. I sort of wish there’d been a bit more of just the two of them in The King of Crows, just because it seemed a waste to put them in the circus together and not give them any alone time.

The setting – everyone says this is one of the best bits of the series, and everyone’s right. In fairness, I have a bit of a weakness for setting, but I can say pretty confidently it’s something Libba Bray manages to evoke better than most books. It wasn’t just through plain descriptions of the setting; she portrayed it through the lifestyle, the characters, and even the slang. I love that she explores all parts of 1920s America, not just flapper life, but life in Harlem and Chinatown, and the different cultures in those areas.

The characters – even though I’ve complained about the characterisation and how much I hate Jericho, I actually do really like the rest of the cast. Even though they all seem quite stereotypical, I think it works because they need to have all these contrasting traits so we can see their differences clearly. I’m not sure I could pick a favourite, but it’s between Henry and Isaiah. They both offer something so lovable, and need to be protected at all costs. I haven’t said anything much about Mabel, but I really appreciate her as well; she was a character I could relate to, and I think it really added to the story to have a non-diviner, and a socialist (because fuck capitalism).

Blind Bill – his arc was brilliant. He started off as a nobody, then a sinister villain, then a hero – props to Libba Bray for being able to make me feel all those different emotions towards him. The scene where he sacrificed himself to kill Sarah Beth Olsen absolutely ripped at my heartstrings, and was a much more realistic response to Isaiah’s death than whatever the fuck was happening with Memphis. I think it’s beautiful that he started off taking life from Isaiah to save himself, then ended up sacrificing himself by taking another life to avenge Isaiah.

Tackling racism, sexism and homophobia - it would’ve been very easy for Libba Bray to ignore all the bad parts of 1920s America to bring us an exciting flapper ghost story, but she didn’t, and I think she deserves credit for that. She didn’t even take the quitter’s route, which would’ve been only include black and white characters, all straight, so she could get points for being ‘PC’, but she made it realistic – a Chinese girl, a Jew, and several gay characters. I mean I’m still waiting on my South Asian representation (hint to any budding authors), but since they weren’t really found in 1920s America (as far as I know), this isn’t an actual complaint. It’s also obvious that the characters weren’t thrown in for ‘token diversity’, because Bray explores their ethnic backgrounds, or how discrimination has changed them and makes life harder, and I didn’t really feel detached from their stories. I think it’s important that these characters couldn’t be white or straight, because their stories wouldn’t make sense that way. Next goal: get the group up to a 50-50 gender split? I know studies show when it’s 50-50, men feel outnumbered, but why should we pander to them? Just for once, I’d like to see a group where there’s an equal number, or more, girls.

 

BAD THINGS:

Pacing – this was a huge flaw in the books, in my opinion. I’ve already said I could’ve cut about 150 pages out of each of them and we’d all benefit from it, but at the same time the action sequences desperately needed a bit more fleshing out, especially the last one. Every time I was left scratching my head, it was because the pacing was off and everything happened way too quickly for me to comprehend.

Love interests – where is my single people representation?! Why does every character need to end up in a relationship? I’m sick of relationships being seen as the be all and end all in books like this – couldn’t we have just left it as Sam and Evie, Memphis and Theta? Henry didn’t need another man, he deserved time to grieve for Louis, or just to focus on something else. Jericho, frankly, didn’t deserve a girlfriend. Why did Sarah Beth kiss Isaiah – he’s 11? Ling was perfect asexual representation, and Alma didn’t need to be thrown in just so everyone could be coupled off. Also, didn’t Alma deserve time to grieve for Gabe? Why is no one allowed to grieve in this series?

Show not tell – this is classic advice, and every amateur storyteller knows you’re not meant to just tell everything in the narrative. But for some reason, in the last two books, there is an extortionate amount of ‘telling not showing’. It honestly reads like, “Evie likes cameras flashing because she likes attention”, “Ling doesn’t want to be carried because she doesn’t want to rely on anyone”, or “Mabel is so jealous of Evie and Jericho”. It’s lazy storytelling, and it’s an insult to fans of the series.

Villains - Jake Marlowe was an awful villain. His only motivation was greed, and it felt like Libba Bray was trying to make him complex with his past with Will, but it fell completely flat. He was just an overly ambitious Macbeth-type with nothing redeeming about him. The king of crows was also a cartoonish villain. He was a bit scary when I was reading in the dark at midnight, but otherwise he was badly written. Especially the end, when Isaiah destroyed him just by saying 'you're nothing' undermined all the scariness because it was so ridiculous.

The mysteries – there was a big continuity issue with the mysteries, because I’m completely at a loss to understand what they have to do with one another. How were John Hobbes and Wai Mae relevant to the last book? I’m pretty sure they weren’t even mentioned once those plotlines wrapped up. And what was the significance of the ‘Forgotten’ ghosts? I thought they were there to show you could defeat ghosts by promising to remember them, but then none of the characters even used that technique again, they just blasted them. It felt like Libba Bray came up with the plots of the first two books, then realised she had to wrap up the series, which is why the last two books were such a clusterfuck.

The magic system – it never really made much sense how the diviners used their powers, or managed to share them. One of the things that made it feel like they didn’t know what they were doing was because there was never any explanation of what they were doing, or any actual system behind it. Couldn’t we have sacrificed some of the monotonous ghost-hunting for a description of how ‘divining’ works?

Perspective switching – mid chapter! I appreciate third person in a book like this with a lot of characters where it would be confusing to switch first person POV, but you can’t switch perspectives in the middle of a chapter, or even just like a random paragraph! Rick Riordan does this really well in Heroes of Olympus, because even though it’s third person, there’s a very distinct voice when we’re inside each person’s head, and a different writing style, and clear cut-off points. There was none of that in this series, which was part of why it was so infuriating to read.

Libba Bray patting herself on the back – I really didn't like how you could tell she was so smug in her writing, especially in the last two books. The first two seemed relatively humble and actually well-written, but after that it felt like she'd gotten lazy and stopped trying because she was convinced she was already good. Not only that, but I didn't really think Memphis’s poetry was that good, and knowing Bray had written it herself and heaped praise onto it in her books was… painful, to say the least. Not to mention the smug-sounding author’s notes talking about how factual the events were; I expected that from this book. It’s historical fiction, it has to be at least partially accurate. You don’t deserve to credit yourself for *checks notes* researching the time period you were writing in.

 

TO CONCLUDE:

I didn’t go out trying to make this review 8 pages long, it just turns out I have a lot of pure, unfiltered rage about this series. It’s funny because I actually enjoyed reading it, and I was only minorly frustrated in the slow bits, but I guess this was a cathartic experience for me.

What are your opinions on this series? Let me know in the comments!