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A review by bookish_kristina
The Nameless Restaurant by Tao Wong
3.0
3 stars for the good vibes
This book had all the cozy feels and a really rich setting, however I’m still waiting for the story to start. This kinda read like a prologue novella, introducing us to the magical nameless Asian restaurant -which I would love to visit- and a cast of interesting fae characters, but it felt very incomplete and didn’t really work for me as an independent story.
The writing, though enthusiastic and lyrical, was also quite green. This really needed more focus and lacked three major parts of a story: a beginning, a middle and an end. This was more just a snapshot of a night at a restaurant with a huge number of food and cooking descriptions, and a little taste of some pretty cool characters, who I wanted to know so much more about. It did make me hungry, but I felt like I was reading a cooking show not a short novel.
Small note on the writing: the pleonasm in this was quite annoying.
‘More importantly, practicing with the wok was important’
‘Never took proper care to do a job properly’
These kinds of redundant sentences are pervasive throughout and it gives this an inexperienced and unpolished feel. I’d love to see a good editor get in there to smooth out these rough parts.
And yet I’d still be interested to see what else this author can come up with and read a more complete work from them in the future. The narration was excellent and I felt calm and relaxed while listening to this. Not a bad experience overall but also, lots of room for improvement.
Thanks to NetGalley and Dreamscape for an advanced copy of this audiobook, my opinions are my own.
This book had all the cozy feels and a really rich setting, however I’m still waiting for the story to start. This kinda read like a prologue novella, introducing us to the magical nameless Asian restaurant -which I would love to visit- and a cast of interesting fae characters, but it felt very incomplete and didn’t really work for me as an independent story.
The writing, though enthusiastic and lyrical, was also quite green. This really needed more focus and lacked three major parts of a story: a beginning, a middle and an end. This was more just a snapshot of a night at a restaurant with a huge number of food and cooking descriptions, and a little taste of some pretty cool characters, who I wanted to know so much more about. It did make me hungry, but I felt like I was reading a cooking show not a short novel.
Small note on the writing: the pleonasm in this was quite annoying.
‘More importantly, practicing with the wok was important’
‘Never took proper care to do a job properly’
These kinds of redundant sentences are pervasive throughout and it gives this an inexperienced and unpolished feel. I’d love to see a good editor get in there to smooth out these rough parts.
And yet I’d still be interested to see what else this author can come up with and read a more complete work from them in the future. The narration was excellent and I felt calm and relaxed while listening to this. Not a bad experience overall but also, lots of room for improvement.
Thanks to NetGalley and Dreamscape for an advanced copy of this audiobook, my opinions are my own.