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A review by steph01924
The Far Dawn by Kevin Emerson
2.0
This book was a bit of a letdown. I wasn't totally captivated by the first book, but the second one was more fast-paced and had a few twists near the end that made me hope this book would get interesting because that book was a pretty quick and entertaining read. Spoiler Alert: It didn't.
Actual spoilers are needed to understand what I didn't like:
Character deaths
By the time Lilly got around to dying, I didn't really care about the resolution much anymore. I assumed she'd either be brought back or have some thing where Rana ended up becoming human and she and Owen lived happily ever after. Lilly came back, but that doesn't cancel the half of the book where Owen moped and tragically felt his feelings and felt empty and blah blah blah. Maybe I'd be sadder if I CARED about Lilly and Owen's 3 week relationship, but I don't. Lilly was barely in the last book and during most of that time, Owen was busy kissing Seven (not that he WANTED to, mind you, but it kind of happened and he's a teenage boy and he kinda sorta didn't hate it). So I didn't buy his emotional state that supposedly fueled the remainder of the book. Plus his random italicized outbursts about Elissa...oh god! Okay, I get it. It's tragic. His sister is dead. Move on.
And Leech was killed off last book, so that sucked any sarcastic fun from this book. Everyone else I couldn't even remember their characters from the first book, so who cares.
Flashbacks
The flashback to Atlantis was WAY too long. You cannot spend so much time on characters I've barely gotten to know. If I didn't care about Lilly and Owen, there's NO way I'm going to care about Rana and Luk in their never-ending flashback to an extremely cliched and uninteresting mystical Atlantis. Which segues into:
Atlantis as a Plot Point
I haven't read very many stories that are set in Atlantis, but one I did that's still stuck with me is Prospero's Children. I can't recall all of the plot (and the sequels got VERY weird) but I can still recall the setting/mood the author created for Atlantis, the twists and turns of a city and the mystical-ness of it. It was so much more captivating than this. This whole trilogy made me feel like you could've inserted any made up 'forgotten and ancient' civilization in place of 'Atlantis' and it would've been just as easy to follow along and be bored with.
Overall Weak Story
It just wasn't great. Paul was an over-the-top cartoon, the end felt mushy, there were too many long descriptions of the world that held no relevance to anything, plot points felt like they just got dropped (um, WTF, random virtual reality world and person trying to escape? We get this brief and pointless chapter to show us...people are trying to escape a shitty world? Thanks for beating that dead horse. And then a little NEWS BULLETIN ALL IN CAPS FOR NO REASON AND REALLY ANNOYING TO READ, which tells us absolutely nothing, and then no more is said about this character. Huh?), and Owen's voice just got less and less realistic.
I feel like this book maybe doesn't deserve THAT much hate, but at the same time, screw that, because this could've been written much better and I reread/skimmed half the second book to recall pertinent details to read this sucker and now I feel like my time has been wasted. So boooo, book, boooo.
Actual spoilers are needed to understand what I didn't like:
Spoiler
Character deaths
By the time Lilly got around to dying, I didn't really care about the resolution much anymore. I assumed she'd either be brought back or have some thing where Rana ended up becoming human and she and Owen lived happily ever after. Lilly came back, but that doesn't cancel the half of the book where Owen moped and tragically felt his feelings and felt empty and blah blah blah. Maybe I'd be sadder if I CARED about Lilly and Owen's 3 week relationship, but I don't. Lilly was barely in the last book and during most of that time, Owen was busy kissing Seven (not that he WANTED to, mind you, but it kind of happened and he's a teenage boy and he kinda sorta didn't hate it). So I didn't buy his emotional state that supposedly fueled the remainder of the book. Plus his random italicized outbursts about Elissa...oh god! Okay, I get it. It's tragic. His sister is dead. Move on.
And Leech was killed off last book, so that sucked any sarcastic fun from this book. Everyone else I couldn't even remember their characters from the first book, so who cares.
Flashbacks
The flashback to Atlantis was WAY too long. You cannot spend so much time on characters I've barely gotten to know. If I didn't care about Lilly and Owen, there's NO way I'm going to care about Rana and Luk in their never-ending flashback to an extremely cliched and uninteresting mystical Atlantis. Which segues into:
Atlantis as a Plot Point
I haven't read very many stories that are set in Atlantis, but one I did that's still stuck with me is Prospero's Children. I can't recall all of the plot (and the sequels got VERY weird) but I can still recall the setting/mood the author created for Atlantis, the twists and turns of a city and the mystical-ness of it. It was so much more captivating than this. This whole trilogy made me feel like you could've inserted any made up 'forgotten and ancient' civilization in place of 'Atlantis' and it would've been just as easy to follow along and be bored with.
Overall Weak Story
It just wasn't great. Paul was an over-the-top cartoon, the end felt mushy, there were too many long descriptions of the world that held no relevance to anything, plot points felt like they just got dropped (um, WTF, random virtual reality world and person trying to escape? We get this brief and pointless chapter to show us...people are trying to escape a shitty world? Thanks for beating that dead horse. And then a little NEWS BULLETIN ALL IN CAPS FOR NO REASON AND REALLY ANNOYING TO READ, which tells us absolutely nothing, and then no more is said about this character. Huh?), and Owen's voice just got less and less realistic.
I feel like this book maybe doesn't deserve THAT much hate, but at the same time, screw that, because this could've been written much better and I reread/skimmed half the second book to recall pertinent details to read this sucker and now I feel like my time has been wasted. So boooo, book, boooo.