Note: The title of this book has been translated into English by me for the reading comprehension of this blog's viewers as the book itself isn't available in English (yet). The original title reads Het Oog van de Waarheid.
I've already read and reviewed two books in Eva Raaff's Taragon Trilogy series, which I both liked. She's also written this standalone fantasy, however, unrelated to the Taragon universe. So let's check it out! Spoilers ahead.
In a fantasy-based kingdom, a society known as the Scarlet Order pulls a lot of strings behind the scenes. Deep down they want only one thing: to obtain the jewel known as the Eye of Truth, which is said to grant one the power to see all truth. The blind prophet Ansius prophecies who would find it, and in the midst of it all are a six of children; two young royals, two witches and two apprentice-warriors, who want to thwart the Scarlet Order's plans.
While I wasn't the biggest fan of this book, I definitely liked it. Heck, some things it actually does better than the Taragon Trilogy, which I already love. But other things, not as much.
Let's first get the things I didn't care for as much out of the way: the characters. This book has a lot of elements going for it, but despite that I just couldn't really get into any of the main characters. And we have a lot of characters to balance, with our six main characters and then there's also the antagonists and several side characters, some of whom also get a POV from time to time. So with such a huge cast we have a lot of characters to remember and honestly not all of them left a big impact on me. Even the main characters I was mostly just lukewarm towards. I did like the princess character at first just because of how entitled and bratty she was, but after a while I kind of lost interest in her as well.
None of the characters are bad, per se, but I just find Raaf's character writing to be far weaker here than in the previous Taragon Trilogy. That series has only a few main/POV characters, but they come across far stronger as the characters here and I genuinely like those characters, they felt more flawed and tangible. They're memorable. Over here there's just so many and none of them in particular I remembered aside of their roles in the story. So I think maybe Raaff bit off a bit more than she could chew with having so many main/POV characters in this story. Sometimes less is more, as is the case in Taragon.
That said, what I do like more here than in the trilogy is the world-building. The Taragon Trilogy had decent world-building, but I'd be lying if I said that a lot of it was unique. Said trilogy was good, but the world is basically a very standard high fantasy one, with a medieval European kingdom and another pretty stereotypical desert setting for the sequel. I don't remember exactly about the third book, but so far the first two books don't feel too unique world-building wise. Not bad, just a bit trope-heavy. There's also a bit of an imagination-shattering scene where characters reference real-life birthday songs and such in Taragon.
Here, the world-building definitely feels more unique and thought-out. Again, I am not calling Taragon's world-building bad, just a bit trope-y and not super deep (in books one and two, at least). But there's more nuance and layers to the world of The Eye of Truth. The world just felt a bit more real and tangible to me, which is obviously a good thing. The universe also felt bigger (most of Taragon takes place in only two-three kingdom locations so far). So, yeah, good job on the world-building.
Overall this book didn't leave a huge impact on me and I thought the climax went by a bit fast. It's not bad and has good stuff going for it, this one just wasn't one of my favorites by Raaff.
Rating: 3.5/5
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