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A review by bookishfreedom
A Wish Too Dark And Kind by M.L. Blackbird
2.0
Actual rating more like 2.5 stars.
This was a hard book to rate for me, because I kind of enjoyed this story in spite of its quality. In other words, I had a lot of fun reading it, but I probably wouldn't recommend it to a friend.
A Wish Too Dark And Kind was carried by its characters. There were a lot to juggle for the overall length of the story, but they were all so colorful that it almost didn't matter. This book is swimming with villains and morally gray individuals, and it was a blast seeing how they all weaved together despite being so unique, and to try and determine who to root for. Part of what made them so great was the character descriptions: they were vivid and unique really brought all of the oddballs to life.
In general, though, I had mixed feelings about the prose. The character and setting descriptions were most well done, sometimes even great but at some points it went a little too far. It was well balanced at times, but other times felt like the narrative was taking itself too seriously. This also resulted in a bit of mixed messaging from the worldbuilding. It was deep and interesting enough to keep me reading, but at times felt like it was dark just for the sake of being dark. Then at some points that I found funny, I wasn't sure that it was actually meant to be comedic.
What really keeps me from recommending this book however was the dialogue and pacing. For how detailed and elaborate this world and story was, it felt very rushed at times. Since the characters were so interesting, I would've liked more opportunities to get to know them, rather than just being so focused on moving the plot forward. The dialogue also tripped me up a bit: it was stilted at times (not horribly - this is just something that really impacts the quality of a story for me. I want characters to talk like regular people!) and a little inconsistent. (Characters who were supposed to be immortal/centuries years old speaking too casually. I wanna see more old timey-slang from characters that are supposed to be old-timey!)
My overall impression of this book is that I am very interested in reading future works by Blackbird. A lot of the bones are there - the ideas and the characters - and with some more writing experience I think there will be some good books from him in the future.
This was a hard book to rate for me, because I kind of enjoyed this story in spite of its quality. In other words, I had a lot of fun reading it, but I probably wouldn't recommend it to a friend.
A Wish Too Dark And Kind was carried by its characters. There were a lot to juggle for the overall length of the story, but they were all so colorful that it almost didn't matter. This book is swimming with villains and morally gray individuals, and it was a blast seeing how they all weaved together despite being so unique, and to try and determine who to root for. Part of what made them so great was the character descriptions: they were vivid and unique really brought all of the oddballs to life.
In general, though, I had mixed feelings about the prose. The character and setting descriptions were most well done, sometimes even great but at some points it went a little too far. It was well balanced at times, but other times felt like the narrative was taking itself too seriously. This also resulted in a bit of mixed messaging from the worldbuilding. It was deep and interesting enough to keep me reading, but at times felt like it was dark just for the sake of being dark. Then at some points that I found funny, I wasn't sure that it was actually meant to be comedic.
What really keeps me from recommending this book however was the dialogue and pacing. For how detailed and elaborate this world and story was, it felt very rushed at times. Since the characters were so interesting, I would've liked more opportunities to get to know them, rather than just being so focused on moving the plot forward. The dialogue also tripped me up a bit: it was stilted at times (not horribly - this is just something that really impacts the quality of a story for me. I want characters to talk like regular people!) and a little inconsistent. (Characters who were supposed to be immortal/centuries years old speaking too casually. I wanna see more old timey-slang from characters that are supposed to be old-timey!)
My overall impression of this book is that I am very interested in reading future works by Blackbird. A lot of the bones are there - the ideas and the characters - and with some more writing experience I think there will be some good books from him in the future.