Julie Eshbaugh

Astrid, indentured to the royal class and long-time surrogate for Princess Renya's punishments, impetuously decides to risk her life and compete in a cutthroat race in order to win her family's freedom.

Crown of Oblivion

In this mesmerizing YA fantasy mash-up of The Road meets The Amazing Race, one girl chooses to risk her life in a cutthroat competition in order to win her freedom. In Lanoria, Outsiders, who don’t have magic, are inferior to Enchanteds, who do. That’s just a fact for Astrid, an Outsider who is indentured to pay off her family’s debts. She serves as the surrogate for the princess—if Renya steps out of line, Astrid is the one who bears the punishment for it. But there is a way out: the life-or-death Race of Oblivion. First, racers are dosed with the drug Oblivion, which wipes their memories. Then, when they awake in the middle of nowhere, only cryptic clues—and a sheer will to live—will lead them through treacherous terrain full of opponents who wouldn’t think twice about killing each other to get ahead. But what throws Astrid the most is what she never expected to encounter in this race. A familiar face she can’t place. Secret powers she shouldn’t have. And a confusing memory of the past that, if real, could mean the undoing of the entire social structure that has kept her a slave her entire life. Competing could mean death…but it could also mean freedom.

Sheila Goicea

I received a copy of this book via Harperteen via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review. Thank you! In no way does this affect my rating or review.



Content Warning: Indentured Servitude, Beating/Whipping, Drug use, abuse & dealing

  I may not know my own name, but I know misery, and this is it.

Crown of Oblivion is a Young Adult fantasy that has science fiction undertones. Strongly influenced by The Great Race, and compared to The Hunger Games, the story revolves around a race and a system of inequality. In the land of Lanoria, indentured servants, known as Outsiders, are magicless, and powerless. Astrid is the surrogate to Princess Renya, and takes any physical punishment that she earns through disobedience. Astrid is no foreigner to a life of difficulty. Her father is ill, and she does everything she can to get him a pass to receive medical help. When she is finally able to get the document he needs, he collapses and dies on the stage at a national affair.

Shortly after, Astrid finds herself signing up for the Race of Oblivion--a race where Outsiders can participate to win and become a Citizen. With becoming a Citizen, her entire family would gain access to citizenship, and would receive help and status.

  For the winner, the Race of Oblivion means citizenship, but there’s only one winner each year. For many of the contestants, the race means death. It’s cruel, really. Stripped of all their personal memories, racers wake with amnesia somewhere outside the city walls, with nothing more than a short list of instructions and a map to the first clue.

Once Astrid is basically drugged and finds herself nameless in the race, many new obstacles appear. One never knows who is trustworthy, and fatalities occur regularly. 

I didn’t feel that Astrid really play the game in the race. She never really worked towards solving any of the clues, and left others around her do it for her. This is a small fry complaint in comparison to the lack of world-building, and an unclear magic system. I found myself throughout wanting to know much more especially about the magic system, but it wasn’t discussed thoroughly enough. I thought Astrid's character was done well. She was inquisitive, and didn't fall into the trap of trusting everyone she met along the way throughout the race. 

Overall, I thought this was a decent read. I simply wanted more information, especially the world-building, dissected further. Unfortunately, the plot simply didn't resonate with me. Several aspects were new and unique, but overall, it felt familiar to me.

Vulgarity: Minimal
Sexual content: Minimal
Violence: Moderate

My Rating: ★★★

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Leelynn Brady

Disclaimer: I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Thank you to Edelweiss, HarperTeen, and Fantastic Flying Book Club for this free copy.

Okay.

So. I think I should preface this by saying that I tried to read Eshbaugh’s Ivory and Bone and I just could not get into it. It could have been because I was listening to it and maybe the narrator wasn’t really my speed. Either way, I set it aside for a while and I haven’t picked it up. So I will be honest and say that I wasn’t sure how I was going to feel after reading this book because I already didn’t have a stellar experience.

But, I’m happy to say that for the most part, I liked this one a lot better than Ivory and Bone, so I feel like Eshbaugh really improved as a writer from her first series. I am always happy to support growth and improvement, and I won’t completely write off an author because I don’t connect with one of their novels. It’s very rare that I do, so I’m glad that I was able to take my feelings of my first attempt at her novel in stride, and not let it overshadow how I felt about this one.

Now on to the actual review.

I won’t lie. I was really disturbed by the idea of the royal family and magical people having “surrogates” to take their punishments. Probably because this concept was a real thing and probably still is a real thing in some places – but I didn’t research the present so don’t hold me to that – and I can’t handle people getting beaten, period. Very early on in the novel, I want to say in the first or second chapter, when Astrid and Princess Renya were looking for Astrid’s brother – who is also a surrogate to the Prince – because he ran away from one of his punishments, they come across a room that’s spattered with what can only be her brother’s blood. And Astrid knows that room well because she’s been in that same place, receiving a similar punishment for something that Princess Renya did. That just kills me, okay? I don’t even know if those that have surrogates even feel bad about their actions because they aren’t the ones that suffer the physical consequences. If they did, would they continue to keep doing bad shit?

Probably not.

Anyway, I couldn’t help but want a better life for Astrid, and even though she had to basically endure a race where everyone in it is already at a disadvantage put on them by those in power, I watched in anticipation as she fought her way to make this better life for her and her remaining family members. She was… just relentless in her drive, even when she wasn’t able to remember who she was. Even when she didn’t remember what she was racing for. She just had enough motivation and dedication to keep going. I don’t think I could have done it, and characters like her really make me want to step it up in life.

Bottom line: I think Eshbaugh did a great job with this novel. I am curious to see what she ends up publishing next.



Also, I wanted to express my condolences to Eshbaugh. In an interview she did for this tour, she mentioned that both her step-mother and her mother-in-law ended up passing away this year due to illnesses. Her step-mother had Alzheimer’s disease and her mother-in-law had dementia, both dealing with memory loss and ended up being a subconscious inspiration for this novel. In a way, she dedicated this novel to them and what they went through during their final moments in life, and I truly hope that Eshbaugh has some time to mourn and heal from these losses.

Crown of Oblivion

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