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A review by kielma
The Ill-Made Mute by Cecilia Dart-Thornton
1.0
I really, really didn't like this book. It was a struggle for me to finish. The only reason I did was because I read a review saying they liked the romance in this book and I'm a sucker for romance. But the romance here is very, very minimal, so don't let that be your reason for reading this!'
I'm not a writer, but once when I was in high school I decided to write a really long story. A few pages in I got bored and switched the story line completely, mid-story. A few pages after that, I changed it again. In a few more pages I changed it again, and a few pages after that I gave up and killed off all the characters. Needless to say, that was an awful story I wrote. This book reminds me very much of that story. There are three distinct sections of this book in which the characters are completely different (including the main character!) and even the world is completely different. It just doesn't work. I found the world-building to be very interesting in the first section and was disappointed when it disappeared never to return.
Another complaint is a definite feeling that the author wrote this with a thesaurus open on the desk beside her. She used very few words I didn't understand, she just used lots that barely fit the situation. I found this to be annoying.
The only good thing I have to say about this book is the way the author incorporated actual folklore from Scotland, Wales and the Orkney and Shetland Islands. The presence of creatures from this lore was the only constant in this book. This was great, except it got old really fast. Strange malevolent or mischievous magical creatures show up many times every day in the characters' lives, and despite the characters' absolute terror of these creatures, they rarely do any actual harm. Boring.
I'm not a writer, but once when I was in high school I decided to write a really long story. A few pages in I got bored and switched the story line completely, mid-story. A few pages after that, I changed it again. In a few more pages I changed it again, and a few pages after that I gave up and killed off all the characters. Needless to say, that was an awful story I wrote. This book reminds me very much of that story. There are three distinct sections of this book in which the characters are completely different (including the main character!) and even the world is completely different. It just doesn't work. I found the world-building to be very interesting in the first section and was disappointed when it disappeared never to return.
Another complaint is a definite feeling that the author wrote this with a thesaurus open on the desk beside her. She used very few words I didn't understand, she just used lots that barely fit the situation. I found this to be annoying.
The only good thing I have to say about this book is the way the author incorporated actual folklore from Scotland, Wales and the Orkney and Shetland Islands. The presence of creatures from this lore was the only constant in this book. This was great, except it got old really fast. Strange malevolent or mischievous magical creatures show up many times every day in the characters' lives, and despite the characters' absolute terror of these creatures, they rarely do any actual harm. Boring.