Synopsis: Dying Embers tells the story of Drake McCarty; a sixteen year old boy with more than a few challenges in his life. As if it wasn't enough that he had begun seeing creatures that no one else could, he is suddenly thrust into the position of liaison to an alien race. He was just coming to understand that part of his life when he finds himself pronounced father to three Larian infants; embers. They are injured, frightened, and carrying a pathogen with the capacity to destroy any technology it contaminates. Bole and the rest of the mature aliens are of limited help; exiled from their home-world following a bloody civil war, they arrived on Earth in a burned out spaceship just as the Cold War began, and for over half a century the military kept them a closely guarded, rather boring, and ultimately unproductive secret. But when the other half of the conflict arrives, bent on continuing the war here on Earth Bole has no choice but to defend his new home and the family he has built here, leaving Drake to tend to the embers on his own. But Drake has other allies; a family with roots that stretch back into antiquity, and a reach that spans the world. They in turn know beings native to Earth, but far more alien than any of the Larians; creatures that hold no love for the species that they see as invaders, but might hold the key to his children's very survival. Review: Iwant to begin by apologizing to the author of this novel, Betty Adams, for not completing her book which I had agreed to give my honest review about. Holding up my end of the deal, this review will be by thoughts and opinions on the first half of the book as I only managed to read up to page 127 / 276. This book originally captured my attention with the adorable cover art - it is nothing completely amazing or spectacular, but it hit me as being very genuine and beautiful, and thus, I decided to read this novel. To be completely honest, I didn't enjoy this book. Not to say that the story is terrible, but I found this book to be very one dimensional, which resulted in me having absolutely no emotional connection with the characters or story. There were obvious attempts by the author to build on backstories of the characters, which just fail to work. These attemps to build backstories were dispersed throughout the novel in, what I assume, is to allow the reader's connection with the characters slowly change and mature. Unfortunately I found that this attempted method of connection made the story very boring, as we really don't know all that much about the characters at any given point in time. My second issue with the characters, is with the aliens and their many names. The protagonist aliens in this book are mostly introduced within the first few chapters - and there are a decent number of aliens to introduce! The problem is that each alien has several different names (formal, informal, and sometimes nicknames), which caused me to really struggle to remember who was who. Needless to say this caused a huge lack of connection between me and the alien characters. Lastly, I found the story line to be quite boring, considering this is a sci-fi genre book. I was very underwhelmed. During the first half of the book, which is all I read, there really is not much epic action as would be expected with an alien book. The story mainly based around a brother - sister relationship developing more trust, of which the alien babies are just a means of. Though I've been trying for two weeks to finish reading this novel, my lack of connection with the characters and lack of interest in the storyline, made Dying Embers too unbearable to finish. Keep in mind that this is only my opinion of the first half of the book, and that my opinion may, in no way, reflect that of the entire novel - for all I know, it could have had a spectacular ending. Rating:
DNF (Did Not Finish)
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Synopsis: In the hundreds of years since the Holy City disappeared, darkness has fallen over the land. Human kingdoms have seized control of the realm, scattering the other races into hiding. Bridazak, a skilled thief, and his friends, a Dwarf and a fellow Ordakian, have dared to remain within the human communities and live relatively quiet lives, until they discover a mysterious, magical artifact. The three friends are thrust into an adventure that will challenge their faith, their purpose, and their destiny as they chase a forgotten and lost prophecy across the realm of Ruauck-El, where they hope to discover the origins of the strange item and their place in its history. An ancient, unknown enemy threatens the completion of their journey at every turn. Bridazak is about to face the biggest adventure of his life, one that may change the known realm, and answer the questions he has carried all his life. Will they unlock the truth? Review: I have to say that I was underwhelmed by this book. I went into it not knowing exactly what to expect as the synopsis was fairly vague. All in all, this novel was an attempt at an unoriginal fantasy quest story. First, I’ll begin with what I enjoyed about the book: Since I listened to the audiobook version of this, I got to listen to the author and a couple other people voice the main characters. Brae Wyckoff and the other voice actors had great reading voices, and I enjoyed their narration for the most part. I also enjoyed the very beginning of the novel, before the characters were sent on their main journey. There was fairly good character and world building, and everything was described the perfect amount, where I could clearly picture the world and events, but didn’t get bored with excessive description. Unfortunately, the negatives of this book outweighed the positives for me. I mentioned that I enjoyed the voice actors for the most part, but nearing the end of the novel, Dulgin’s voice become irritating. For a book of this length, his voice was too unnatural and eventually started sounding very fake. I also disliked how there was only one female voice actor who voiced several female characters in the story. Her voice was so distinct (since it has a slight accent) that all of the female characters sounded very similar, and made it easy to mistake them for one another. Some reviews of this novel relate it to Lord of the Rings, which I think is completely off track! I can clearly see the author’s attempt at creating a story with a similar feel to Tolkien’s novels, but Wyckoff fell short with a super cliché storyline and characters, as well as only a mediocre writing style. I can’t say that his writing was “bad” but it was very sequential (i.e. this happened, then this, then this…) which become boring after a while. As well, many portions of the story seemed to be dribbled in thesaurus vomit – some words just didn’t sound natural or seem to fit in with the rest of the story. One of the biggest mistakes I found with this story is too many convenient coincidences which got characters out of trouble. I am a strong believer that you can use coincidences to get characters into trouble, but you can never use them to get characters out of trouble – that’s just a cheap move. And too many times throughout this story, did characters conveniently have the right tools or the right people to save them. This story also has too many repeated events/scenes which made everything very predictable. In the beginning of the story, the Orb tells Bridazak that he will protect him of the journey. Yet the authors still tries to create scenes that appear life threatening by giving characters fatal wounds etc. which are conveniently healed almost immediately after. The repetition of trying to create life threatening events made the story appear to have no clear climax. The cliché characters consisted of the “good guys” and “bad guys” who are polar opposites of good and evil for no clear reason (the villain is simply just evil). And the cliché villain with the evil laugh and tacky one-liners just seemed too one dimensional and underdeveloped. I have to give props to Brae Wyckoff for his intentions on creating a brand new fantasy world and story, but everything just fell short and the story sounded very cliché and amateur. If you are a fan of fantasy books, I unfortunately wouldn’t recommend this for you. Rating:
2/5 Stars |
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October 2016
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