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3.72 AVERAGE
3.72 AVERAGE
adventurous
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
I would categorize this as more of a children's book than a teen book, but I still enjoyed it. It felt a lot like it was setting up the rest of the series; it was slow and there was a lot less action than I had hoped for. I am curious to see what the rest of the series looks like though.
The made up world of the Half Continent created by D.M. Cornish in Foundling is incredible, and a joy to read about. I appreciated the author's attention to detail, and the amount of time and energy it must have taken to bring his dream to life. The book is told with childlike wonder, and it's enjoyable to learn about the world along with the main character, who is a young boy. I also loved the drawings that were included by Cornish. I'm excited to read the next book in this series!
This book confused me. I'm not quite sure what it was trying to do, or who the audience was. I suppose it was another play on the orphan child who is chosen for something special and then goes on an adventure, but the pieces never clicked for me. I found the writing to be hard to connect to and not very enjoyable to read. There was so much information and I feel like the author really fleshed out the world (there's 100 pages of an appendix in the back, for a 3oo page book!), but there was no pay off for it in the book. We barely skimmed the surface. I had really wanted this to be better.
adventurous
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Children's book my big toe. I could barely understand this bloody thing!
And I get what the author was doing, in fact I admire him for attempting to make something completely new. However, under all the made-up words and flower dressings is a rather simple, generic fantasy story.
Not for me.
And I get what the author was doing, in fact I admire him for attempting to make something completely new. However, under all the made-up words and flower dressings is a rather simple, generic fantasy story.
Not for me.
I picked this up at the book store because it said it was like J.R.R. Tolkien and Robert Jordan. What unfolded was not what I expected but I still liked it. Rossamund is an orphan that has grown up in a foundling house and is educated and prepared for work. He gets sent to his first job post and along the way runs into many adventures. The story itself is a little hard to read with some of the dialect used and you would have to be a persistent reader to stick with it. There is also a 100 page glossary of definitions for all the words used. The author does a great job of creating his own world and is very creative in that aspect. I just don't know if today's teen readers are willing to put in the work to get to the meat of the story. I enjoyed it much more as the story went along. Hopefully teens who like fantasy would like this book.
I found this really laborious to read, but the overall storyline was enjoyable.
I loved the world building in this series. It was an exciting and engaging plot with many twists and turns. There is some violence concerning monster attacks but it is handled well, neither too gory or too spars. It’s also an easy read with most of the language laid out and consistent without too obvious of an info dump. There are however a definition of some term or item at the start of each chapter that I could have done without. All in all a very engaging and fun book.
I’m looking forward to the next book.
I’m looking forward to the next book.
I've now read this book twice. I LOVE this series. It's just so good. I love the reinvention of words and creative ideas. It's all so fun to read. Also, I've spent a lot of time trying to buy book 3 1/2 the Tales from the Half-Continent. It's so rare I haven't been able to buy it from major sellers in America or even from Australia. It's a life goal to track this book down.
Such a fun read! You really get to know the characters in book 1, and the ending sets you up to want to jump right into book number 2! My boyfriend and I are buddy reading the series during quarantine & are having quite the adventure doing so.