The Unwanteds Quests by Lisa Mcmann: A Book Review

Note: This review is spoiler free (spoilers are all marked and have warnings)!
Book: The Unwanteds Quests Whole Series
Author: Lisa Mcmann
Genre: Fantasy
Age: For readers 10 and up 
Rating: 2.5/5

Somebody call my doctor because I’m sure my BP skyrocketed while reading this series. A lot of the books in this series made me frustrated beyond measure. Other than Fifer being an annoying brat, the books have several other flaws. The writing style has less flow, the og characters are behaving differently, the dialogue between characters is not that interesting, the inner character monologue was just plain cringy and the overall plot was disappointing. I’m going to get this out of the way: the Unwanteds Quests is not as good as the original series. In fact, I’m going as far as to say that it’s not a good series at all. If it weren’t for the Unwanteds being my favorite series and everything, I would have abandoned this series from book one.


What could use improvement:

1. The Main Characters: It’s realllllly hard to like a book when the main characters are two MORONS who have NO BRAIN CELLS. 🙄  Thisbe and Fifer are two stupid teenagers who go out on a dangerous mission in book one and call it ✨ glamourous ✨ . Then they are stupid enough to forget all their supplies like seek spells or Hux’s wings. They just assumed Hux’s old wings would make it across the chasm…. like why are you guys gambling with your lives??
   
2. Fifer: I literally loathe this character so SO much. Why do I possess such hate?
   

• Exhibit A: SHE’S IMMATURE. Thisbe was also immature at the start of the series but she grew up (somewhat). Fifer on the other hand still acts like a five year old the entire series but miraculously earns everybody and their mom’s respect while Thisbe barely gets a second glance for her achievements. Major Spoilers: The prime example of Fifer’s immaturity is when she throws a BALL a month after her brother DIED. Who does that???? 
  
• Exhibit B: She’s not fit to be the head mage whatsoever. In Dragon Curse, all she cared about was power. She just wanted the leader title because she likes bossing people around. She constantly moped in this book about the MOST superficial problems. She also lacked empathy for others like Thisbe who was still suffering trauma from when she was held captive. 
  
• Sidenote (Spoilers): It makes no sense why everybody wanted Fifer to be the head mage. In Dragon Ghosts, everyone turned to Fifer for help during the mission in Grimere, which didn’t seem very logical. Every other person on that rescue team has gone on countless more rescue missions and have wayyyyy more experience. But instead they disregarded that Fifer has zero experience and is a literal 12 year old and put her in charge of a high stakes mission. Why did Simber and the others turn to her of all people for leadership? 
  

3. The Revinir: The villain for the entire quests series was weak! I don’t know where this blabbering, too trusting fool came from but Eagala did NOT use to be like this in the original series. She was dumbed down in the spin off series to be some fool who falls for easy, see through schemes set by two 12 year olds. I still can’t get over the fact that she trusted Thisbe countless times and got betrayed by her time and time again. 😂   I mean did she never learn?! It made the Revinir seem weak and easily beatable, which made the entire villain plot boring. And that’s another thing- why did it take 7 books to defeat one person? It made the series tedious and repetitive. Besides, the Revinir wasn’t even particularly cunning and kept falling for ametuer plans. It definitely should not have taken 7 books to defeat her…


4. Og Characters: It’s like Lisa Mcmann took all of the original characters, threw them in the trash and replaced them with robotic versions of themselves. All of the original characters (Mainly Samheed, Aaron, Florence) were so different from their characters in the original series! For one, they had ZERO personality in the spin off series. Second, all their dialogues and the way they acted was so off! It didn’t even seem like I was reading about the same characters. 

• Example 1: Aaron (Spoilers in this paragraph): It seemed very out of character for him to lash out at Thisbe and publicly shame her in book 7. I get that Ishibashi had just died and he wasn’t acting normally, but still. The Aaron from the original series would not have adamantly held Ishibashi’s death against Thisbe. 
  
• Example 2: Florence (SPOILERS in this paragraph): If Aaron’s reaction to Thisbe in book 7 seemed odd, Florence’s reaction was even more bizzare. Aaron at least had an excuse to act out of sorts, because of Ishibashi’s death. But Florence? She was stubbornly shunning Thisbe for no reason. Even after Fifer explained that it was all a plan to betray the Revenir! It was so out of character for Florence. 
  
• The sad part about all of this is that if the roles were switched between Fifer and Thisbe, Florence would never have held a grudge against Fifer. She has clear favoritism between the two twins.
• Example 3: Samheed: Samheed was just plain childish in this spin off series 💀  All of the character growth he developed in the original series was thrown away. For starters, what even was the pointless attempt to stir drama between Samheed and Aaron? It’s been ten years since the last series and you’re telling me Samheed STILL remains withdrawn and hostile towards Aaron? I mean I didn’t expect them to be close buddies in the spin offs, but I also didn’t expect Samheed to start adding fire to the anti-Aaron protestor’s fuel. It was a cheap attempt at stirring drama between the two but it came at the expense of Samheed’s character development.
  
  5.  Romance: The romance between Fifer and Dev was unnecessary. Lisa McMann built up a storyline throughout the books where Fifer was uncomfortable with any sort of romantic inclination. At the ball, Fifer stated many times that she could never see herself in a relationship. Then at the last moment, in book 7, Fifer was thrown into a relationship with Dev. This plotpoint seemed like ace baiting after the previous books made clear of Fifer’s indifference towards romance and relationships. 
  ​6. Inconsistencies (Spoilers): The number one plot hole in this book has to do with the magical seaweed. How does it even work? Because how did Aaron die of natural causes before Fifer or anyone else? The seaweed should have ensured a prolonged life but somehow he died before Fifer, Thisbe and several others… 
  

I wish I just stopped reading the books after Island of Dragons. The Unwanted Quests lowkey ruined the amazing story and characters that were introduced in the og series. 

Read my Spoiler Free review of the Betrothed

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