Take a photo of a barcode or cover
courge37 's review for:
Curious Tides
by Pascale Lacelle
I have mixed feelings about this book, on one hand there were things I enjoyed and on the other I felt like putting it down more than once and skimmed through the ending.
First of all, it's awesome that a French Canadian author is making it onto the English fantasy scene woohoo. I also loooooved the cover, talk about stunning, and the French release looks even more gorgeous.
Plot/pacewise, the beginning was great, the mystery of what caused the students to die was intriguing, but damn the pace was s-l-o-o-o-o-o-w. Very atmospheric, and I would say a little to much to my taste; I felt it could have been 200 pages shorter, which was the main reason I wanted to put this down. By the time things started happening, I was skimming cuz I just wanted to get to the end.
The writing I found to be really good at first, but towards the end I found myself getting tired of it and rolling my eyes at the overly flowery descriptions. I feel like sometimes the author could have used simple language to express some things but instead chose to avoid using the most common expressions to try to make things sound "poetic," which I personally find heavy... but that's personal taste, cuz I'm really not a fan of poetry.
But yeah, this especially got on my nerves during those sections on black pages that were supposed to be excerpts of Song of the Drowned Gods. I felt like I just reading a bunch of pretty words put together. Seas made out of ash? "She's the ribcage wrapped around the heart of the world?" What does that even mean? Blood and heart and bone and soul of what? Songs heard between the stars? Plucking stars out of the sky? Huh? Who are the scholar and the witch and whatever supposed to be again? Who's the boy waiting at the gate and singing of gold and silver and marble? What is all this supposed to represent?
Which brings me to my next point, worldbuilding. I thought the whole Songs of Drowned Gods thing and the goddesses were confusing. They went to the other world for what exactly? Why can't they come back if they are goddesses? Why is there a sea of ash and why would you want to go there in the first place? I can't remember.
However, I thought the whole phases of the moon thing was really cool (as did everyone else I assume), and so was the Collapsing aspect, and the secret society and the institute were interesting as well. Maybe there was just a tad too much stuff going on for one story? Idk.
As for characters, I didn't care much for Emory cuz of the way she was treating my boy Baz ... ditching him when his sister just died, and then using him to get what she wants? Blech. Talk about cold, man. Also, I found it weird that she was so obsessed with Romie, like, even more than Baz and Nisha were. But hey, at least she doesn't end up with charismatic sexy brooding Keiran which really would have ticked me off.
I'm a sucker for underdogs and I reeeeeeally liked Baz so I guess he brings an extra star all on his own (he deserves better than Emory, Kai x Baz for the win even though I strongly suspect it will be Emory x Baz). I also think Jae was cool but could've been more exploited and have more personality. I liked Kai, Virgil and Penelope too.
One last tiny pet peeve: Kai, Keiran, Romie, Emory = please don't use names that are too similar, aspiring authors.
So yeah, part of me wants to read the rest but I don't know if I'll have the patience to power through it. That being said, I feel like I criticized this a lot but the story is memorable and the author definitely has a lot of talent that I can only aspire to reach, so there you go!
First of all, it's awesome that a French Canadian author is making it onto the English fantasy scene woohoo. I also loooooved the cover, talk about stunning, and the French release looks even more gorgeous.
Plot/pacewise, the beginning was great, the mystery of what caused the students to die was intriguing, but damn the pace was s-l-o-o-o-o-o-w. Very atmospheric, and I would say a little to much to my taste; I felt it could have been 200 pages shorter, which was the main reason I wanted to put this down. By the time things started happening, I was skimming cuz I just wanted to get to the end.
The writing I found to be really good at first, but towards the end I found myself getting tired of it and rolling my eyes at the overly flowery descriptions. I feel like sometimes the author could have used simple language to express some things but instead chose to avoid using the most common expressions to try to make things sound "poetic," which I personally find heavy... but that's personal taste, cuz I'm really not a fan of poetry.
But yeah, this especially got on my nerves during those sections on black pages that were supposed to be excerpts of Song of the Drowned Gods. I felt like I just reading a bunch of pretty words put together. Seas made out of ash? "She's the ribcage wrapped around the heart of the world?" What does that even mean? Blood and heart and bone and soul of what? Songs heard between the stars? Plucking stars out of the sky? Huh? Who are the scholar and the witch and whatever supposed to be again? Who's the boy waiting at the gate and singing of gold and silver and marble? What is all this supposed to represent?
Which brings me to my next point, worldbuilding. I thought the whole Songs of Drowned Gods thing and the goddesses were confusing. They went to the other world for what exactly? Why can't they come back if they are goddesses? Why is there a sea of ash and why would you want to go there in the first place? I can't remember.
However, I thought the whole phases of the moon thing was really cool (as did everyone else I assume), and so was the Collapsing aspect, and the secret society and the institute were interesting as well. Maybe there was just a tad too much stuff going on for one story? Idk.
As for characters, I didn't care much for Emory cuz of the way she was treating my boy Baz ... ditching him when his sister just died, and then using him to get what she wants? Blech. Talk about cold, man. Also, I found it weird that she was so obsessed with Romie, like, even more than Baz and Nisha were. But hey, at least she doesn't end up with charismatic sexy brooding Keiran which really would have ticked me off.
I'm a sucker for underdogs and I reeeeeeally liked Baz so I guess he brings an extra star all on his own (he deserves better than Emory, Kai x Baz for the win even though I strongly suspect it will be Emory x Baz). I also think Jae was cool but could've been more exploited and have more personality. I liked Kai, Virgil and Penelope too.
One last tiny pet peeve: Kai, Keiran, Romie, Emory = please don't use names that are too similar, aspiring authors.
So yeah, part of me wants to read the rest but I don't know if I'll have the patience to power through it. That being said, I feel like I criticized this a lot but the story is memorable and the author definitely has a lot of talent that I can only aspire to reach, so there you go!