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A review by vaporization
A Cruel and Fated Light by Ashley Shuttleworth
1.0
What a useless book. It has no right to be this long when it's this boring. The amount of times I rolled my eyes cannot be counted.
The things I dislike: immature writing, writing that does too much in terms of formatting (writers I beg leave your writing alone and let the words do the work), too many characters to not care about, twists so predictable and obvious the characters look stupid, too many references to memes and popular culture that date the book.
This book has perspectives from Arlo, Nausicäa, Vehan, Aurelian, Celadon, and Riadne. And does such a poor job of using all of these perspectives. The climax of Vehan and Aurelian's relationship is initially not from either of their perspectives. What. Riadne's perspectives are so boring, so predictable, so cookie-cutter. Arlo looks like a Massive Idiot for being duped by her. That's not even a spoiler, it's just obvious if you have half a brain. If the author wanted Riadne's words not to sound sarcastic and manipulative all the time maybe they shouldn't have put in the italics that make things sound sarcastic. Not every other word has to be in italics jesus.
I think Lethe and Celadon are interesting, and that's about it. However Celadon's reputation in my mind took quite a hit when he was given so many obvious clues to his big reveal that he looks like an absolute moron for not getting it immediately. He's like hm this is an interesting and probably significant clue that seems to tie back to some other significant thing I discovered before I wonder what it could mean. YEAH. I WONDER.
Also, Celadon's queerness gets briefly mentioned in one paragraph. For how heavy-handed the rest of the book is about it it felt like it was shoved in just to say that he was queer. This is not an issue of tokenization, this is an issue of bad writing and poor character development.
The things I dislike: immature writing, writing that does too much in terms of formatting (writers I beg leave your writing alone and let the words do the work), too many characters to not care about, twists so predictable and obvious the characters look stupid, too many references to memes and popular culture that date the book.
This book has perspectives from Arlo, Nausicäa, Vehan, Aurelian, Celadon, and Riadne. And does such a poor job of using all of these perspectives. The climax of Vehan and Aurelian's relationship is initially not from either of their perspectives. What. Riadne's perspectives are so boring, so predictable, so cookie-cutter. Arlo looks like a Massive Idiot for being duped by her. That's not even a spoiler, it's just obvious if you have half a brain. If the author wanted Riadne's words not to sound sarcastic and manipulative all the time maybe they shouldn't have put in the italics that make things sound sarcastic. Not every other word has to be in italics jesus.
I think Lethe and Celadon are interesting, and that's about it. However Celadon's reputation in my mind took quite a hit when he was given so many obvious clues to his big reveal that he looks like an absolute moron for not getting it immediately. He's like hm this is an interesting and probably significant clue that seems to tie back to some other significant thing I discovered before I wonder what it could mean. YEAH. I WONDER.
Also, Celadon's queerness gets briefly mentioned in one paragraph. For how heavy-handed the rest of the book is about it it felt like it was shoved in just to say that he was queer. This is not an issue of tokenization, this is an issue of bad writing and poor character development.