Author: artchilles

Genre: Fantasy

What I liked about this book:

There are little bits of this prose that are incredibly well-crafted. The bit of description right at the beginning of the old prologue was gorgeous. Unfortunately this chapter is gone now, but there were little glowing bits like that throughout this book. I can tell this author has the capacity for some real talent based on that.

What I did NOT like about this book:

I'm four chapters in and I still have no idea what this book is even about.

Part of the problem here is that the point of view is very distant. Third omniscient is one of those things that's on my 'usually I hate this' list. I have seen it done well once or twice, but in order to be done well, you gotta give me insight into all your individual characters, which is incredibly difficult to do from the point of view of an omniscient narrator. Unsurprisingly, this didn't accomplish that. It attempted to tell me who was who, but gave me no insight into how they feel or who they are as people.

Apart from that, the entire thing had white room syndrome. I know we're at a castle but I have very poor grasp of the scenery in general. This only added to the confusion over the characters. I usually recommend not introducing so many in a first chapter, and because of the lack of scenery description and telly prose, I still don't know who's who.

There's some foreshadowing in here of later but it's being done in a 'nee ner nee ner I'm not telling you' sort of way, which is something I've complained about in other reviews. I understand these siblings are going to be hunting one another, but since I wasn't told why or how, I'm just confused instead of curious.

This entire thing needs a much more tightly focused point of view. Pick ONE character. Focus on just that one character's emotional state. Don't introduce the rest of the siblings all at the same time, and stop head hopping around the prose. I need to care about your characters to care about this story, and I just don't right now.

This was just sort of confusing and tough to understand.

Overall:

I did not enjoy this. I do think the author shows glimmers of talent, and could make this a solid read if they focused the POV a bunch.

Rating:

3/10, but shows promise.