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mmuutthh's review
4.0
(I met the author at a writing conference recently, and purchased this book.)
I really enjoyed the story and I thought the writing was descriptive and perfectly suited to genre. I liked the world and its many facets — all reaching from the different arms of the ever-expanding fantasy realm — and the mix of different technologies both developing, and ancient and old. So, I am actually very curious to read more of this series and more from the author!
But…
This book, at least with the copy and possibly the edition I have, is a mess. I love and am dying to support indie-authors (mainly as I look to become one as well) but the effort needs to be paid to make the books look indistinct from a traditionally published work. This book failed at that and I really hesitated over rating it lower because of that, but the writing is really good, and so I don’t want to scare people away from reading this simply because it’s quite amateurishly put together. (Again the edition I have is like this. Future editions, as evidenced by the other book I bought from the author, may address a number of these issues. But even that book didn’t cover them all.) I also feel bad putting this in a Goodreads review, as I’m not trying to put the author on blast, but if you’re asking people to give you money, it needs to please the customer.
I will say the one other element of the actual writing — and that’s what I try to really focus on in these reviews — is some of the shifts in tone. Overall there’s a heavy Avatar: The Last Airbender feel to the book, but then it jumps from that dramatic but, sometimes silly (and verging on the knife’s edge into slapstick) into like, Joe Abercrombie-esque super-dark and gruesome violent action. It’s jarringness is like watching cartoon character have sex or dipping French fries in ice cream. It won’t be for everyone.
But yeah, I liked it overall and it was intriguing enough that I’ll probably follow up on the other books in the future.
I really enjoyed the story and I thought the writing was descriptive and perfectly suited to genre. I liked the world and its many facets — all reaching from the different arms of the ever-expanding fantasy realm — and the mix of different technologies both developing, and ancient and old. So, I am actually very curious to read more of this series and more from the author!
But…
This book, at least with the copy and possibly the edition I have, is a mess. I love and am dying to support indie-authors (mainly as I look to become one as well) but the effort needs to be paid to make the books look indistinct from a traditionally published work. This book failed at that and I really hesitated over rating it lower because of that, but the writing is really good, and so I don’t want to scare people away from reading this simply because it’s quite amateurishly put together. (Again the edition I have is like this. Future editions, as evidenced by the other book I bought from the author, may address a number of these issues. But even that book didn’t cover them all.) I also feel bad putting this in a Goodreads review, as I’m not trying to put the author on blast, but if you’re asking people to give you money, it needs to please the customer.
I will say the one other element of the actual writing — and that’s what I try to really focus on in these reviews — is some of the shifts in tone. Overall there’s a heavy Avatar: The Last Airbender feel to the book, but then it jumps from that dramatic but, sometimes silly (and verging on the knife’s edge into slapstick) into like, Joe Abercrombie-esque super-dark and gruesome violent action. It’s jarringness is like watching cartoon character have sex or dipping French fries in ice cream. It won’t be for everyone.
But yeah, I liked it overall and it was intriguing enough that I’ll probably follow up on the other books in the future.
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