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lordnikon's review
3.0
I have a few overall issues with the book, some bigger than others…but I’d say overall I enjoyed it.
I disliked large swathes of the dialogue, which often felt YA to me…when the book is clearly not meant to be that. Speaking of YA, the tone of the first half of the book, which was essentially the school/learning portion seems to try to ape other book series with magical schools in them…but kind of falls short in a number of ways. For example, Bree basically has plot amour with regards to the school rules. She effs up, gets sent to the barracks…stops not the way and breaks more school rules while doing something too advanced for her. Nothing happens to her. In fact she’s legit busted at least twice more (before the death of a certain character) and STILL the reprimands are minimal. It basically allowed me as the reader to assume that Bree was not only 100% safe….but that she could do what she liked. I know her rebellious spirit is a part of her character…but that must carry more weight and consequences if that’s the case.
My biggest gripe is the pace over story. It’s like Dalglish is in a rush to get to certain plot points, so he rushes around the narrative too fast. As a result, something like the “love story” (yes, in inverted commas) between Bree and Dean may not feel forced…but DAMN it was rushed as hell. That after a few days or weeks or whatever Bree and Dean would tell each other they “love” the other person…is far from believable. This is compounded when Dean is killed in the duel (a duel that is NEVER brought up beforehand; waved off as Dean not wanting to worry Bree…which I found suspect) and you are meant to feel the emotional heft of that loss keenly from Bree…but you don’t. Because you’ve only had…maybe 50-60 pages with him and her and two “dates”…I felt squat. This event drives Bree for a while, and that drive felt lacklustre as a result.
Kael’s relationship with Clara feels FAR more organic as it’s allowed to play out over the course of the entire book. As a result, I liked that dynamic better.
It felt like the second half of the book is a whole different volume from the first half. We get Harry Potter School Life for 50% and then Harry Potter and the Knock Down Battle Full of Death in the second. I mean…I got whiplash from that switch. Which again, didn’t feel earned. I need more time to understand the world building and relationship between Weshern and the other islands. Any conflict with Galen is spurious on the face of not having been in on that when it comes to the fore. That felt forced. The conflict (or eventual conflict) with Centre is more organic.
From the moment a disciple of Johan first speaks with Kael early on….you KNOW Centre is bad. You KNOW that the whole “god keeps these islands afloat” is hogwash. You KNOW that they are hiding something from everyone. That was a little overly telegraphed. I KIND of wish that it wasn’t. It would have been nice to see Centre as benevolent for the whole book, and only reveal the Disciples of Johan, and the evil bits about Center and the nature of the islands LATE in the book. Would have made for a sweet revelation. Instead I’m left knowing who the Big Bad is from about page 20. Which is sad.
Also, nitpick time. Weshern is a mere "30 miles end to end” according to the narrative…but it takes a full day to cross it by foot (that’s ABOUT 8 hours…so not exactly a “day") and a half-hour by wings (Are you FLYING MEGA slowly?). I’d love for David Dalglish to understand the concepts of time and space and geography a little more, because that stood out to me.
Overall I enjoyed the book. Great concepts. Interesting plot points. Characters I largely like…though no one but Kael and Bree get much personality. I mean the two school thug brothers…are essentially cardboard cutout bully villains. Even the teachers, like Kime and Dohn are mostly just caricatures…
So yeah, I’ll read the next one at some point…but I hope he fixes some of the issues from this one.
I disliked large swathes of the dialogue, which often felt YA to me…when the book is clearly not meant to be that. Speaking of YA, the tone of the first half of the book, which was essentially the school/learning portion seems to try to ape other book series with magical schools in them…but kind of falls short in a number of ways. For example, Bree basically has plot amour with regards to the school rules. She effs up, gets sent to the barracks…stops not the way and breaks more school rules while doing something too advanced for her. Nothing happens to her. In fact she’s legit busted at least twice more (before the death of a certain character) and STILL the reprimands are minimal. It basically allowed me as the reader to assume that Bree was not only 100% safe….but that she could do what she liked. I know her rebellious spirit is a part of her character…but that must carry more weight and consequences if that’s the case.
My biggest gripe is the pace over story. It’s like Dalglish is in a rush to get to certain plot points, so he rushes around the narrative too fast. As a result, something like the “love story” (yes, in inverted commas) between Bree and Dean may not feel forced…but DAMN it was rushed as hell. That after a few days or weeks or whatever Bree and Dean would tell each other they “love” the other person…is far from believable. This is compounded when Dean is killed in the duel (a duel that is NEVER brought up beforehand; waved off as Dean not wanting to worry Bree…which I found suspect) and you are meant to feel the emotional heft of that loss keenly from Bree…but you don’t. Because you’ve only had…maybe 50-60 pages with him and her and two “dates”…I felt squat. This event drives Bree for a while, and that drive felt lacklustre as a result.
Kael’s relationship with Clara feels FAR more organic as it’s allowed to play out over the course of the entire book. As a result, I liked that dynamic better.
It felt like the second half of the book is a whole different volume from the first half. We get Harry Potter School Life for 50% and then Harry Potter and the Knock Down Battle Full of Death in the second. I mean…I got whiplash from that switch. Which again, didn’t feel earned. I need more time to understand the world building and relationship between Weshern and the other islands. Any conflict with Galen is spurious on the face of not having been in on that when it comes to the fore. That felt forced. The conflict (or eventual conflict) with Centre is more organic.
From the moment a disciple of Johan first speaks with Kael early on….you KNOW Centre is bad. You KNOW that the whole “god keeps these islands afloat” is hogwash. You KNOW that they are hiding something from everyone. That was a little overly telegraphed. I KIND of wish that it wasn’t. It would have been nice to see Centre as benevolent for the whole book, and only reveal the Disciples of Johan, and the evil bits about Center and the nature of the islands LATE in the book. Would have made for a sweet revelation. Instead I’m left knowing who the Big Bad is from about page 20. Which is sad.
Also, nitpick time. Weshern is a mere "30 miles end to end” according to the narrative…but it takes a full day to cross it by foot (that’s ABOUT 8 hours…so not exactly a “day") and a half-hour by wings (Are you FLYING MEGA slowly?). I’d love for David Dalglish to understand the concepts of time and space and geography a little more, because that stood out to me.
Overall I enjoyed the book. Great concepts. Interesting plot points. Characters I largely like…though no one but Kael and Bree get much personality. I mean the two school thug brothers…are essentially cardboard cutout bully villains. Even the teachers, like Kime and Dohn are mostly just caricatures…
So yeah, I’ll read the next one at some point…but I hope he fixes some of the issues from this one.
darylreads's review
adventurous
dark
emotional
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
brocc's review
2.0
Just not my cup of tea... Didn't really flow as well as I would have liked and felt like there were a few too many fantasy cliches going on. Plus I'm afraid I never warmed to the characters! :(
calissa's review
3.0
Disclaimer: I was provided with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Skyborn was not my cup of tea. It has some interesting concepts but I found the characters flat and difficult to connect to.
The story kicks off with a battle between Seraphim: aerial soldiers who utilise mechanical wings to fly and fight with elemental energy stored in prisms. It's an action-packed beginning, but one that struggles under the weight of all the worldbuilding jammed into it. The stakes are high for Breanna and Kael, whose parents serve in the defending army. However, those stakes might as well not exist for the reader, who doesn't get to meet the older Skyborns until Breanna's mother dies in her arms. Without any kind of emotional connection, the sequence reads as a series of tropes solely designed to deliver information about the world.
Perhaps I am being too harsh, because it does serve as a nice introduction to Breanna and Kael. Despite being told to stay with their aunt, Breanna sneaks out to watch the battle. While she dangles her legs off the edge of their floating island home, Kael sits back at safer distance. Inevitably, Breanna's recklessness gets them caught up in the battle and she doesn't endear herself by abandoning her brother when he, frightened, takes shelter.
The symbolism in the book isn't exactly subtle. For example, the Skyborns grow up in Lowville, a community of earth-bound farmers and fishermen on graceless wings. When tested for their affinity to the elements, reckless Breanna shows a strong connection with fire while cautious Kael ends up with ice and light.
I found the relationship between the twins was the most interesting aspect of the story. Alternating chapters (from a close third-person point-of-view) allow us to see things from the perspective of both Breanna and Kael. This slowed down the pace of the story because it meant developing two protagonists instead of one; the twins might attend the academy together but their lives are, for the most part, fairly independent of each other. I liked this. It meant that there was always one twin to take the place of the rising star at the academy--and it changed as the story progressed. Best of all, neither of the twins was resentful of their sibling in the limelight. They may sulk a little or have their own worries to contend with, but they were never hateful and their relationship always remained supportive (with the plot-driven exception of the prologue).
As I mentioned, the pace is slow at first but picks up a bit past halfway, once the world and characters have been established. My interest picked up a little with the pace, but I often found myself skimming through paragraphs of description.
On the whole, Skyborn is a readable story but not an especially engaging one.
This review first appeared on Earl Grey Editing.
Skyborn was not my cup of tea. It has some interesting concepts but I found the characters flat and difficult to connect to.
The story kicks off with a battle between Seraphim: aerial soldiers who utilise mechanical wings to fly and fight with elemental energy stored in prisms. It's an action-packed beginning, but one that struggles under the weight of all the worldbuilding jammed into it. The stakes are high for Breanna and Kael, whose parents serve in the defending army. However, those stakes might as well not exist for the reader, who doesn't get to meet the older Skyborns until Breanna's mother dies in her arms. Without any kind of emotional connection, the sequence reads as a series of tropes solely designed to deliver information about the world.
Perhaps I am being too harsh, because it does serve as a nice introduction to Breanna and Kael. Despite being told to stay with their aunt, Breanna sneaks out to watch the battle. While she dangles her legs off the edge of their floating island home, Kael sits back at safer distance. Inevitably, Breanna's recklessness gets them caught up in the battle and she doesn't endear herself by abandoning her brother when he, frightened, takes shelter.
The symbolism in the book isn't exactly subtle. For example, the Skyborns grow up in Lowville, a community of earth-bound farmers and fishermen on graceless wings. When tested for their affinity to the elements, reckless Breanna shows a strong connection with fire while cautious Kael ends up with ice and light.
I found the relationship between the twins was the most interesting aspect of the story. Alternating chapters (from a close third-person point-of-view) allow us to see things from the perspective of both Breanna and Kael. This slowed down the pace of the story because it meant developing two protagonists instead of one; the twins might attend the academy together but their lives are, for the most part, fairly independent of each other. I liked this. It meant that there was always one twin to take the place of the rising star at the academy--and it changed as the story progressed. Best of all, neither of the twins was resentful of their sibling in the limelight. They may sulk a little or have their own worries to contend with, but they were never hateful and their relationship always remained supportive (with the plot-driven exception of the prologue).
As I mentioned, the pace is slow at first but picks up a bit past halfway, once the world and characters have been established. My interest picked up a little with the pace, but I often found myself skimming through paragraphs of description.
On the whole, Skyborn is a readable story but not an especially engaging one.
This review first appeared on Earl Grey Editing.
bibliotropic's review
4.0
In what we can assume is a far-future time though it’s never explicitly stated as such, the world is very different from what most people imagine fantasy worlds to be. Instead of taking place on terra firma, humanity has moved to islands in the sky, kept aloft by the grace of God and the theotechs of Center. Kael and Bree, whose parents were killed years ago, are tested for elemental affinity and chosen to join the seraphim, winged fighters and defenders of the islands, following in the footsteps of their deceased parents. But things aren’t quite as straight-forward as they seem, and as time goes on, both Kael and Bree find increasing evidence to show that all is not right with the world, and that their very presence may have further-reaching consequences than either of them could predict.
The world that Dalglish sets up is one that appeals to me. Maybe I’ve just been spending a lot of time in worlds that centre around flight, but something about the seraphim really caught my attention. The seraphim of Skyborn aren’t so much winged messengers of God so much as they are humans with elemental affinity, given mechanical wings powered by magic to enable them to fly. Beyond the thrilling prospect of flight, there was the very notion of the islands themselves, and how they came to be. I like it when books play with religious elements and twist them around a little, so the idea that God might have come and changed humanity, allowing a theocracy to spring up and use magic to keep floating islands going so that people can be closer to God… Yes, there was definitely something in that idea that struck a chord with me, and while I thought that most of the world-building was done on the surface rather than digging deep, it was developed enough to keep me intrigued, and it didn’t raise any questions that had contradictory answers within the text. Dalglish did a lot by keeping things vague, allowing the reader to focus on the world and events at hand rather than dwelling too much on what got them there in the first place.
However, the story itself felt like it was padded in too many places. Allowance can be made for some of this, since the reader is, at times, learning alongside the two protagonists. Their lives have changed, a new chapter begun, and so it makes sense that there’ll be some info-dumping now and again, because they’re getting it too. But when the first chapter essentially has someone walking Bree through the steps involved in strapping on a pair of borrowed wings and how to use her body to maneuver while in flight, it feels unnecessary. Much of that scene could have been skipped, the lessons stated later on. Or the scenes in which Bree and Kael build their respective romantic relationships. Good for character development, bad for pacing, because after a while, it gets dull to read about them going on dates when what I want to know is what’s happening next in the main plot.
And the bulk of the plot doesn’t really pick up in pace until well past the halfway point, leaving the first half feeling much like a, “Here’s what I did at flight camp today” story. Details are great, but at times it seemed like they were coming at the expense of the story.
As far as characters go, much of what needs to be said is about Bree. While Kael plays a part in the story, Bree is the centre of attention for much of the novel. Which is understandable. After all, she has a natural talent at flight, breaks academy records, is insubordinate when she feels like things aren’t going her way, attracts the attention of an older student, and has such a headstrong hot-tempered personality that her control over her fire element is practically nonexistent and yet is the most powerful anybody’s ever seen.
It’s hard to read a lot of her scenes without Mary Sue accusations. And really, she does fit the mold. Even her flaws turn into strengths in the end. Every major event that happens, happens because of her. Even other characters admit it. Which could be find if Bree was the only main character, despite all of her overblown awesomeness. But when she’s alongside Kael, who is average in most ways except for the fact that he ends up dating a royal daughter, the focus comes off as very lopsided, and you start to wonder what the point of Kael is to begin with.
Maybe he’ll play a larger role in later novels in the series. I hope so, because he really doesn’t get much time to shine in Skyborn, overshadowed as he is by his sister.
But despite those fairly large flaws, Skyborn is, over all, an enjoyable book. It ends on a fascinating cliffhanger, things are really starting to heat up politically, and while I wish Bree hadn’t been so overpowered, I am interested in seeing how her story continues in future novels. And Kael’s. Because he needs more love. The writing is smooth even when the pacing is off, the world is interesting and only getting moreso, and Dalglish has given us a pretty compelling beginning to a new aerial fantasy series. Consider me in for future installments.
(Book received in exchange for an honest review.)
The world that Dalglish sets up is one that appeals to me. Maybe I’ve just been spending a lot of time in worlds that centre around flight, but something about the seraphim really caught my attention. The seraphim of Skyborn aren’t so much winged messengers of God so much as they are humans with elemental affinity, given mechanical wings powered by magic to enable them to fly. Beyond the thrilling prospect of flight, there was the very notion of the islands themselves, and how they came to be. I like it when books play with religious elements and twist them around a little, so the idea that God might have come and changed humanity, allowing a theocracy to spring up and use magic to keep floating islands going so that people can be closer to God… Yes, there was definitely something in that idea that struck a chord with me, and while I thought that most of the world-building was done on the surface rather than digging deep, it was developed enough to keep me intrigued, and it didn’t raise any questions that had contradictory answers within the text. Dalglish did a lot by keeping things vague, allowing the reader to focus on the world and events at hand rather than dwelling too much on what got them there in the first place.
However, the story itself felt like it was padded in too many places. Allowance can be made for some of this, since the reader is, at times, learning alongside the two protagonists. Their lives have changed, a new chapter begun, and so it makes sense that there’ll be some info-dumping now and again, because they’re getting it too. But when the first chapter essentially has someone walking Bree through the steps involved in strapping on a pair of borrowed wings and how to use her body to maneuver while in flight, it feels unnecessary. Much of that scene could have been skipped, the lessons stated later on. Or the scenes in which Bree and Kael build their respective romantic relationships. Good for character development, bad for pacing, because after a while, it gets dull to read about them going on dates when what I want to know is what’s happening next in the main plot.
And the bulk of the plot doesn’t really pick up in pace until well past the halfway point, leaving the first half feeling much like a, “Here’s what I did at flight camp today” story. Details are great, but at times it seemed like they were coming at the expense of the story.
As far as characters go, much of what needs to be said is about Bree. While Kael plays a part in the story, Bree is the centre of attention for much of the novel. Which is understandable. After all, she has a natural talent at flight, breaks academy records, is insubordinate when she feels like things aren’t going her way, attracts the attention of an older student, and has such a headstrong hot-tempered personality that her control over her fire element is practically nonexistent and yet is the most powerful anybody’s ever seen.
It’s hard to read a lot of her scenes without Mary Sue accusations. And really, she does fit the mold. Even her flaws turn into strengths in the end. Every major event that happens, happens because of her. Even other characters admit it. Which could be find if Bree was the only main character, despite all of her overblown awesomeness. But when she’s alongside Kael, who is average in most ways except for the fact that he ends up dating a royal daughter, the focus comes off as very lopsided, and you start to wonder what the point of Kael is to begin with.
Maybe he’ll play a larger role in later novels in the series. I hope so, because he really doesn’t get much time to shine in Skyborn, overshadowed as he is by his sister.
But despite those fairly large flaws, Skyborn is, over all, an enjoyable book. It ends on a fascinating cliffhanger, things are really starting to heat up politically, and while I wish Bree hadn’t been so overpowered, I am interested in seeing how her story continues in future novels. And Kael’s. Because he needs more love. The writing is smooth even when the pacing is off, the world is interesting and only getting moreso, and Dalglish has given us a pretty compelling beginning to a new aerial fantasy series. Consider me in for future installments.
(Book received in exchange for an honest review.)
ammacdonald's review
3.0
I will be reading the entire trilogy, so it's hard to develop an opinion now given the story only seems to be starting. Like most opening books in a trilogy, much of the setup is built here. Unlike most of these setup opening books, I found everything to be paced too quickly rather than drawn out. The ideas are great, the concepts fascinating, but I found the characters a little hollow and the dialogue wanting. Still, it was a good read.
twixester's review
3.0
i feel very conflicted about this book. it was good and sometimes interesting but when i put it down it was really hard to pick it back up again... i still don't know whether i will continue with the series... we will see!! :P
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