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A review by sol_journal
Luminiferos: The Omen of Light by Yana Metro
4.0
3.6 (rounded up to 4) out of 5 stars.
I don’t like leaving books bad ratings when it was a personal reason why I had to DNF it- which unfortunately I did at 68%.
The beautiful cover and description totally caught me for this read! Going into it, I was pretty excited about how it would play out. I was sort of expecting something like ‘Narnia’ or ‘The Light Between Worlds’ where you are given a character who has lived this spectacular life in another world, only to go back to their normal one and things are- bland and they want nothing more than to return whatever the cost.
It wasn’t solely like that, but close to it. I think the concept/idea was all there, really interesting. I just, personally, couldn’t get behind the characters, the pacing, and the writing so much.
It’s definitely a trope-y/cliche-y book. It has your usual ‘chosen one’, ‘save the world!’, love interest with A Past’, low-key ‘forbidden love’ feel. Personally, I feel like the romance arc of things moved a bit too quickly. In general, the book had little skips that avoided some details I wish would’ve actually been played out.
There’s a dance suddenly sprung in that I don’t remember being brought up until the chapter it happens which didn’t make sense to me (unless I missed a mention of it which could be possible!). You’re told that a Little Bad (minor (?) bad character) *does* something bad, but you don’t *see* them do the bad. You’re told the love interest is cold and harsh and then suddenly he’s in love with the main character.
Yana Metro does a lot of ‘tell don’t show’ rather than ‘show don’t tell’ which I think was a major losing factor for me. I love it when books show development like- yes please, show me why we hate this person, show me the cold hearted lover melting for this person and *just* this person, show me how this found family group of mismatched people learn to rely on each other!
Something I *did* love about Yana Metro’s writing though, is her world building. This other world we’re given sounds so amazing. There’s detail put into describing this otherworldly place- how houses float in trees, how magic is entirely real, how the world speaks to the people who can speak back to it. It’s lovely really! I wish that detail was put into those aforementioned things I noted earlier!
I wish I could’ve stuck with this book, but these little things made it not for me. It has a lot of potential and maybe I’ll try to pick it up again one day, but for now I’ve chosen to DNF it for the fact that it got to a point where I just couldn’t vibe with it anymore- and I didn’t want to hate the book because of that!
It’s not an entirely bad read at all, it just turned out to not be for me.
I don’t like leaving books bad ratings when it was a personal reason why I had to DNF it- which unfortunately I did at 68%.
The beautiful cover and description totally caught me for this read! Going into it, I was pretty excited about how it would play out. I was sort of expecting something like ‘Narnia’ or ‘The Light Between Worlds’ where you are given a character who has lived this spectacular life in another world, only to go back to their normal one and things are- bland and they want nothing more than to return whatever the cost.
It wasn’t solely like that, but close to it. I think the concept/idea was all there, really interesting. I just, personally, couldn’t get behind the characters, the pacing, and the writing so much.
It’s definitely a trope-y/cliche-y book. It has your usual ‘chosen one’, ‘save the world!’, love interest with A Past’, low-key ‘forbidden love’ feel. Personally, I feel like the romance arc of things moved a bit too quickly. In general, the book had little skips that avoided some details I wish would’ve actually been played out.
There’s a dance suddenly sprung in that I don’t remember being brought up until the chapter it happens which didn’t make sense to me (unless I missed a mention of it which could be possible!). You’re told that a Little Bad (minor (?) bad character) *does* something bad, but you don’t *see* them do the bad. You’re told the love interest is cold and harsh and then suddenly he’s in love with the main character.
Yana Metro does a lot of ‘tell don’t show’ rather than ‘show don’t tell’ which I think was a major losing factor for me. I love it when books show development like- yes please, show me why we hate this person, show me the cold hearted lover melting for this person and *just* this person, show me how this found family group of mismatched people learn to rely on each other!
Something I *did* love about Yana Metro’s writing though, is her world building. This other world we’re given sounds so amazing. There’s detail put into describing this otherworldly place- how houses float in trees, how magic is entirely real, how the world speaks to the people who can speak back to it. It’s lovely really! I wish that detail was put into those aforementioned things I noted earlier!
I wish I could’ve stuck with this book, but these little things made it not for me. It has a lot of potential and maybe I’ll try to pick it up again one day, but for now I’ve chosen to DNF it for the fact that it got to a point where I just couldn’t vibe with it anymore- and I didn’t want to hate the book because of that!
It’s not an entirely bad read at all, it just turned out to not be for me.