Stars: 3 Stars 
 I tried to read something other than YA Fantasy this week - I didn't go well for me. So instead I picked up The Winner's Curse by Marie Rutkoski. 
 It was another one of those YA Fantasy books that falls into the not bad, but not great category. Everything about it felt, brief. It's hard to describe but I just felt like a lot of the book was very underdeveloped, especially the world building. 
 The premise of the book is the usual, one nation has enslaved another. Girl from important family falls for slave boy. Slaves revolt. Boy and girl are in love but at war. 
 The characters and the story for this is actually not bad, but like I mention above, the world building is virtually non-existent. There's not even a map at the start of the book. (I can't trust a fantasy novel that has no map). So what you're left with is a world that is very hazy to the imagination and that makes it hard to set the stage for your novel. 
 The characters are bearable, although they too are a little under developed. Kestrel is the leading lady, the daughter of a high ranking military official and Arin is the slave, who also used to be from a noble family before being conquered. I felt like they had good chemistry together. 
 The plot of this book was a little badly paced. I think there was too much time spent between the start of the book and the beginning of the revolution. In this time all we saw was Kestrel beginning to fall in love with Arin and Kestrel attending parties and generally going about her day to day life. Then the last 20% of the book had SO much happen, beginning with the revolution. I think that it would have been better to have the revolution more towards the start and have Kestrel fall in love with Arin along the way. 
 Probably the thing that is beginning to annoy me the most with most YA fantasy novels is the authors apparently not being able to think of ANY OTHER hobby for their character to have except something music related. It's like they fill in their character profile/questionnaire and see "Hobbies/Interests" and almost 99% of them think "music" or "reading books" or "drawing". These are such mundane and cliche hobbies! I think Brandon Sanderson in the The Final Empire has some great ones with Sazed's hobby of trying to find a religion for people or Ham who philosophizes everything or even Elend who is interested in political theories. Besides Sanderson,John Green always has good ones (learning famous last words, for example) or Neil Gaiman in Neverwhere (collecting trolls). I can't wait to read a character that is a little more quirky then music, drawing or reading. 
 Basically, this book feels a lot like a second draft. I think Rutkoski could have spent a little more time building in more layers into the novel, more details about religions, history, customs, more character quirks, more memories. Over all, an enjoyable read and I've heard that the next installment makes up for a LOT of these things so I am excited to read it.