Author: omaimaakbar

Genre: Fantasy

What I liked about this book:

Some of the wording here is really nice, and the world is unique. You don't see many stories in this sort of middle eastern setting, and the interactions between the masters and what appear to be both villagers and their many servants is very intriguing.

Ayah being a mute also leaves open so many unique opportunities for character development and interaction.

What I did NOT like about this book:

I'm going to be honest, I really disliked this.

It's not even because of anything it did that was super awful. It was more that the entire thing was just dry and bland. I had several false starts picking this book up, and barely made it to chapter 10 on my most recent before accepting that it just wasn't as engaging as I expected it to be and putting it down again.

Much of the prose is very herky-jerky. It does that thing I hate where conversations are described instead of actually occurring, and a lot of the word choice is just plain odd. It was close enough to correct that it just annoyed me and pulled me out of the narrative completely. I would have preferred a shitton of spelling errors, honestly.

The characters all regularly make huge logical leaps that make no sense. Why would Ayah's mother just brush off that she glows under the moonlight? How did they know her father had a heart attack since this seems to be an age before modern medicine? Why would they go down to the master's place just because they saw a horse arrive?

Apart from that, the pacing was awkward. It took *forever* for anything to happen, and when it eventually did, the entire heart attack piece was just glossed over. The narration spends way too much time in Ayah's head and not enough time anywhere else.

A mute character is a great chance as well to showcase how her family treats her, and although this was briefly touched upon, it was nowhere near focused on enough. Your character is a mute. That's interesting. Let it be interesting, damn it.

I just didn't like this overall.

Overall:

Eh. This book was really boring.

Rating:

4/10 because there's some potential here but I wouldn't want to read any more of it without some serious edits.