Take a photo of a barcode or cover
kmacskimming 's review for:
Sharks in the Time of Saviors
by Kawai Strong Washburn
2.5 rounded up. I was really excited for this book. It sounded amazing - magical realism, family drama, Hawaii, etc. and had great reviews. However, for me, it fell flat.
The opening of the book and introduction to the Hawaiian mythology of the Nightmarchers was super intriguing and the steady progression of the family's interconnectedness to the magical forces surrounding them had me hooked. I always struggle with multiple viewpoint books, so that was a challenge, but I was okay with it overall in the case of this book because it presented a perspective from each person as to what they believed was taking place and how it was affecting them personally.
The story lost me when "the tragedy" happened. It seemed like a totally pointless twist to the story that made the last half of the book a slog to get through, and cancelled out a lot of the interest/purpose of the first half of the book. If the same exact thing had happened, but in the last quarter of the book and we spent much less time dealing with the aftermath or at least tightened it up a bit, I think I would have been much more engaged. As it were, I was bored. I could only get through about 15 pages per reading session before I was literally falling asleep.
The last chapter or two kind of helped bring it around a bit more and bring things full circle, but it didn't make up for all the time spent wallowing after "the tragedy."
The opening of the book and introduction to the Hawaiian mythology of the Nightmarchers was super intriguing and the steady progression of the family's interconnectedness to the magical forces surrounding them had me hooked. I always struggle with multiple viewpoint books, so that was a challenge, but I was okay with it overall in the case of this book because it presented a perspective from each person as to what they believed was taking place and how it was affecting them personally.
The story lost me when "the tragedy" happened. It seemed like a totally pointless twist to the story that made the last half of the book a slog to get through, and cancelled out a lot of the interest/purpose of the first half of the book. If the same exact thing had happened, but in the last quarter of the book and we spent much less time dealing with the aftermath or at least tightened it up a bit, I think I would have been much more engaged. As it were, I was bored. I could only get through about 15 pages per reading session before I was literally falling asleep.
The last chapter or two kind of helped bring it around a bit more and bring things full circle, but it didn't make up for all the time spent wallowing after "the tragedy."