Title: The Gift

Author: DeusDoku

Genre: Action/Drama

Quick Summary: Anime style doesn't translate well into writing.

I've ranted about this before in another review, but it bears repeating. Different stories - and different ways to tell that story - Do no work in every single medium. Of these attempted crossings, anime and novels definitely do not tell the same story effectively. It is really hard to get animation across in writing the same way it comes across in said animation.

This book is no exception to that rule. And that is my biggest problem with this book. The opening scene alone made me snort - and not in a good way. This story can be told in novel format, but not in this way. It just doesn't work.

But, as I said, I ranted about this before and I loathe beating dead horses. The main point here aside from that is the execution is... incredibly rocky. I can see what the intent was and I can appreciate it, but that doesn't stop it from being frustrating to me. The base idea is about a kid who develops a power - called a gift - and has to decide between his desire to be a hero or.... joining a league? Honestly I am not entirely sure what the point of having gifts is, just that anyone who has tried to use them for a life of heroics has been killed in some way or another. That's the biggest reason not to use them for heroics.... but what is the alternative? You join a league and I guess you can use your powers to gain money but I don't... entirely understand the point.

My second-biggest problem is with the writing itself. There's a lot of grammatical mishap, but that aside, there's also a lot of telling of the narrative and the POV itself is... odd? I think it's supposed to be omniscient. Which I guess is fine but considering the story so far involves Wave and the Time Keeper, it would probably be better off to do third-person POV that swaps between the two of them. And... without all the weird distribution of information... Some things get glossed over and told to us, like parts of a conversation. In other parts, we get a lot of dumping of information that we don't entirely need? Like with Morph. We didn't need her entire life's story in that section and yet we did.

Honestly, on the whole, there's a good chunk of content, but the way it's relayed makes it feel like not much happened at all.