Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by prophetofthepage
The Waking Forest by Alyssa Wees
2.0
*Disclaimer: eARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review*
It was a story, written in starlight, dashed with dreams, that danced with the darkness. A wild, ‘to be or not to be’, fairy tale, one with stolen magic and dreams that lie but visions that tell the true. A world in a world, in a world in a world. A lucid dream of a magic story, that ends where it begins.
Does that description give you a headache? Then maybe you shouldn’t read The Waking Forest. For the most part, it is an okay book. Yet there is way too much description, too many run-on sentences, too many fragments, too many commas (see what I did there?). Instead of the story being enhanced by the lyrical prose, it detracts from it. It’s just too much description in that starry-eyed voice. I finished this book despite the endless fragmented sentences, not because of them.
The sad part is that this book is not worth pushing through. It’s a strange and confusing lucid dream of a story. One where you have no idea what is going one or how these characters are connected (and the big reveal is just not good enough). In a weird way, this story reminds me of The Wicked Deep. Both are, in my opinion, books that try to cram too much information and plot into not enough pages, coupled with a plot that twists and turns before the reader has a chance to catch up (and one that the reader never fully understands).
The worst part of this book is that it shows its hand too soon. We learn the big reveal about 70% of the way through (I almost DNF at 73%) and the rest is just a boring drudge to get to the end. At this point, everyone goes to do the thing, they do it and live happily ever after. There’s not really an antagonist and the worry-making parts of the book are revealed to be non-worry-making. And then it ends.
In short, it was a mostly terrible story. There are four weird sisters whose names all start with R (Rose, Renata, Raisa, and Rhea) so I got them mixed up a lot. The most interesting and promising bits, the boy and the Witch, just fizzle out halfway through. Magic can do and undo anything, so there’s no lasting consequences of anything. I did like the alternate world with the kingdom of iron and the maculae with their two hearts, and I wished we spent more time there (or better time there) than we actually did.
It was a story, written in starlight, dashed with dreams, that danced with the darkness. A wild, ‘to be or not to be’, fairy tale, one with stolen magic and dreams that lie but visions that tell the true. A world in a world, in a world in a world. A lucid dream of a magic story, that ends where it begins.
Does that description give you a headache? Then maybe you shouldn’t read The Waking Forest. For the most part, it is an okay book. Yet there is way too much description, too many run-on sentences, too many fragments, too many commas (see what I did there?). Instead of the story being enhanced by the lyrical prose, it detracts from it. It’s just too much description in that starry-eyed voice. I finished this book despite the endless fragmented sentences, not because of them.
The sad part is that this book is not worth pushing through. It’s a strange and confusing lucid dream of a story. One where you have no idea what is going one or how these characters are connected (and the big reveal is just not good enough). In a weird way, this story reminds me of The Wicked Deep. Both are, in my opinion, books that try to cram too much information and plot into not enough pages, coupled with a plot that twists and turns before the reader has a chance to catch up (and one that the reader never fully understands).
The worst part of this book is that it shows its hand too soon. We learn the big reveal about 70% of the way through (I almost DNF at 73%) and the rest is just a boring drudge to get to the end. At this point, everyone goes to do the thing, they do it and live happily ever after. There’s not really an antagonist and the worry-making parts of the book are revealed to be non-worry-making. And then it ends.
In short, it was a mostly terrible story. There are four weird sisters whose names all start with R (Rose, Renata, Raisa, and Rhea) so I got them mixed up a lot. The most interesting and promising bits, the boy and the Witch, just fizzle out halfway through. Magic can do and undo anything, so there’s no lasting consequences of anything. I did like the alternate world with the kingdom of iron and the maculae with their two hearts, and I wished we spent more time there (or better time there) than we actually did.