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hairymclary28 's review for:
The Sea-Stone Sword
by Joel Cornah
I found it hard to connect with this book. There are fun ideas with worldbuilding and lots of action, but the characters didn't work for me. The protagonist was very inconsistent: he's supposed to be 13 and we veer between bizarre flashes of insight that would be unusual in someone 3 times his age, people treating him like a middle-aged man, and idiotic behaviour that is entirely typical of 13 year old boys. He starts the book desperate to fight everyone and early on suddenly decides thats not working and stops being angry. While a logical reason is presented for this, there's no emotional reason, so it's all quite unconvincing. I found "heroes aren't actually all that heroic" interesting as a concept, but personally I needed more of a bond with the protagonist for it to work in this book. The side characters are pretty flat and we're told (not shown) that the protagonist cares about them. I liked the reveal at the end but wish it had come half a book earlier so we could have had a character arc from it.