Reviews - Broken Souls and Bones

619 reviews for:

Broken Souls and Bones

LJ Andrews

4.19 AVERAGE

kipledger's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

ravenstears's review against another edition

3.0

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Broken Souls and Bones was a book with the bones of a good story, but a soul that didn't quite live up to the skeleton of a world L.J Andrews was trying to build.

I found myself mostly bored and frustrated throughout this book. It fluctuated wildly between info dumping you over the lore of the world in really gracelessly handled sections, and then explaining nothing at all when you'd really like it to.

The magical system was a cool idea but just was poorly fleshed out. We saw basically no blood or soul melding at all, the bone melding we did see was lacklusterly explained and the mixed melding of Lyra was so easily mastered it was laughable and took all the joy from the magic system and learning it.

And this was a running theme throughout the book, things you should have been able to enjoy had the luster leached from them. A prime example: the idea of Roark being mute and having to use sign language was great, and would have added a great complex layer to bond building of him and Lyra...except she pretty much instantly learnt his special signings, so there was no communication difficulties at all.

The romance also was just not it for me. I wanted more distaste between them and a slower build up to their bond. But it was pretty much instant attraction to each other. There was a low level of disgust there at the start but it was barely anything and Lyra got comfortable with him far to quickly for my liking.

The book overall isn't objectionable, the writing itself isn't bad and the story is just interesting enough to keep you reading. I just don't think overall it's a very memorable read and it's not one I would race to recommend by any means.