Monsters Born and Made by Tanvi Berwah – ARC Review

Thank you to Sourcebooks Fire for providing this book as a digital galley in exchange for an honest review!

One Sentence Summary:

Koral enters the Glory Race, a deadly maristag tournament, to take care of her family and prove herself.

My Review:

I liked this book, but I didn’t love it. To address a couple things first: This book is similar to The Scorpio Races. It differs a lot the further in you get, but it has carnivorous water horses/stags that are rode in races for prize money and the MC wants to do this to keep her family together. Based on concept alone, you could describe either and I might not know the difference. However, the fantasy worlds are very different, as are the eventual structures of the races, and I wouldn’t consider it straight-up copied really in my opinion.

Let’s talk characters! I didn’t think these very very stand-out, but they were definitely good. Koral and Dorian were really interesting to see, especially since they had a past that only Koral could tell the reader about. The book was very action-y, so characters didn’t really take priority, but they were still good.
Although romance is very much not the point of this book, we have a lot of complex family dynamics. Koral’s father believes that her brother is more capable, even when Koral is the one saving him from certain death. Everyone in the family thinks of Koral as less than him even though she’s just trying to help her younger sister survive. It’s intriguing to see how their opinions of each other all change the further into the competition Koral gets.

The world-building was both comprehensive and simple. There are two castes, Renters and Landers, the latter being much richer. Koral is a Renter, so people like her much less for it. We also have the maristags, marine stags much like water horses that have venom and a thirst for human blood. It wasn’t the most detailed ever, but it showed what it needed to show to understand the Glory Races and the politics around them.

Overall, I’d recommend this book to people who want a slightly higher fantasy version of The Scorpio Races with a more diverse cast. It’s not my favorite ever, but I really enjoyed the high stakes and action-packed competition.

⭐⭐⭐/5