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A review by breeperscreepers
Mordew by Alex Pheby
dark
mysterious
fast-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
This book started strong, VERY strong. I loved the world and the Living Mud and the oozy goozy darkness of everything, it was insane in the best way. The middle lost me, it was more like a fever dream fairytale and things just kept snowballing faster without a moment to connect or digest - one minute our main character is learning to read and the next he's burning a civilization to ash with his mere godlike presence . After a certain point everything felt so unreal and unrelatable that I wasn't really interested in what happened next, it was just going to be more magical nonsense on an evermore grander scale.
It's a shame I stopped enjoying the story, the writing was good and the dark imagery was fantastic. Certain scenes towards the end were so morbid that it ticked my rating back up a bit.
On a side note, this book was marketed to me as a steampunky mix of China MÃeville and Mervyn Peake, but I found it to be none of the three. It's a city. Every dang city has a few machines, that doesn't mean it's steampunk.
It's a shame I stopped enjoying the story, the writing was good and the dark imagery was fantastic. Certain scenes towards the end were so morbid that it ticked my rating back up a bit.
On a side note, this book was marketed to me as a steampunky mix of China MÃeville and Mervyn Peake, but I found it to be none of the three. It's a city. Every dang city has a few machines, that doesn't mean it's steampunk.