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A review by fallingletters
When The King Comes Home by Caroline Stevermer
1.0
Quick review originally posted on 5 May 2013 at Falling Letters.
I had a cautiously optimistic hope for this book! I stopped signing books out of the scifi/fantasy section of the library years ago because I could only find awful books, but somehow this caught my eye and the description on the dust jacket sounded very nice, just the sort of thing I would like to read. But...
Oooh, what a disappointment! It was alright for about 50 pages, then I thought it was going to get better, so I kept going, and by the time I realized it was going to stay awful I was so far in I decided to finish it. This is the only book I made any notes on because it frustrated me so much - here they are!
The first note I made was 'Nice little read, not too much to note - lots of art, a little too perfect and blissful' - hah!
There's no real conflict (a bit of teasing is the most we see) then BOOM out of nowhere about 60 pages in everything turns around and the main character's running away and she finds the alleged King and things start to go haywire. There's a number of weird plot things that don't make sense or seem pointless or are really weak. For example, one numerous occasions the MC continues to tag along because it's 'not convenient' for her to go home, as she is supposed to be doing - this isn't played as wishful thinking, like the MC wants to tag along so she pretends it isn't convenient; it's played as actually being inconvenient therefore she must stay. It seems like the author had to work so hard to make sure her MC stays the MC and so everything feels really forced and awkward and out of place. Most of my notes are comments on the poor plot; you get the idea so I won't post them all here.
I did like the writing style - nothing too fancy, fairly concise, but easy to read. I like to think it's the sort of style I write in.
I had a cautiously optimistic hope for this book! I stopped signing books out of the scifi/fantasy section of the library years ago because I could only find awful books, but somehow this caught my eye and the description on the dust jacket sounded very nice, just the sort of thing I would like to read. But...
Oooh, what a disappointment! It was alright for about 50 pages, then I thought it was going to get better, so I kept going, and by the time I realized it was going to stay awful I was so far in I decided to finish it. This is the only book I made any notes on because it frustrated me so much - here they are!
The first note I made was 'Nice little read, not too much to note - lots of art, a little too perfect and blissful' - hah!
There's no real conflict (a bit of teasing is the most we see) then BOOM out of nowhere about 60 pages in everything turns around and the main character's running away and she finds the alleged King and things start to go haywire. There's a number of weird plot things
Spoiler
I thought it was absolutely silly that this 'King' is not actually the King but his assistant and the King himself shows up a bit later, why bother, why not go straight to the King?I did like the writing style - nothing too fancy, fairly concise, but easy to read. I like to think it's the sort of style I write in.