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A review by chantaal
Innocent Darkness by Suzanne Lazear
2.0
Originally posted at The Wandering Fangirl.
Received from NetGalley, this has no outcome on this review.
This cover looks SO COOL and makes up for the summary, which is a bit wanting. Noli Braddock is a girl with a mind of her own, and in an era of proper ladies, corsets, arranged marriages and the occasional steampunky transport, this means she’s viewed as wrong and sent to a reform school. It’s a horrible place, where an attempt is made to beat the individuality out of Noli until she’s a “proper” lady. But on mid-summer’s eve, she unknowingly makes a wish in just the right place at the just the right time, and ends up in the Otherworld, also known as the land of the fae. She’s a girl gifted with something called the Spark, and her sacrifice would keep the fae magic from collapsing in chaos and killing the entire fae civilization.
It all seems like such a cool idea, and I have to give Suzanne Lazear credit for it, but the entire thing simply falls flat in the execution.
For one, there’s barely much of a steampunk side to this novel. Noli is interested in building things, sure, and when we first meet her she illegally rides a hovercar she built out of scrap, but that’s about it when it comes to steampunk. It’s this joyride that’s the last straw on the proverbial camel’s back for the law and for her mother, who sends Noli to a reform school. This is where the novel nearly lost me entirely. I’m fine with a story doing things to move a character down a certain path, but…was all the abuse really necessary? It’s probably a personal thing, but I nearly put the book down because of it.
Second, there’s a love triangle. Yep. Mood killer. There’s Kevighn, who is the fae in charge of finding girls with the Spark for the sacrifice, and there’s Steven, who has been Noli’s best friend since they were children. The way Noli handles things here is smart, I do have to give her credit for that, but there’s so much see-sawing and waffling on what’s improper, etc etc etc.
Third — and I know this is silly but it really annoyed me — I got so sick of seeing the words “hoyden” (meaning delinquent) and “dollymop” (meaning loose woman) while I was reading. It’s like Lazear found the words out of some dictionary for the time period, and liked them so much that she used them over and over and OVER. They also seemed to be the only true period words out of the entire novel. I’m definitely not an expert in language, but nothing about the language screamed historical; everyone seemed to be speaking and thinking in a much more modern way than I’ve read in other steampunk and historical fiction novels. The only things that seemed to be right were dollymop, hoyden, and Noli being scandalized about wearing a sleeveless dress during the daytime or corsets on the outside of a dress. (You lie, book cover. You lie!)
Fourth, the ending was so rushed and seemed as though it was tacked on because the book needed closure in one or two aspects so that the rest of it could stay wide open for the second in the series. It was too neat, too simple, and the cliffhanger wasn’t much of a cliffhanger when the title of the chapter gave everything away.
I didn’t mean for this review to be entirely negative, but not one of the few things I enjoyed about the novel were strong enough to outweigh everything else. There were so many places to go and things to explore, but they all got left by the wayside for a problem that was wrapped up too easily, and for romance that had no true feeling to it.
Received from NetGalley, this has no outcome on this review.
This cover looks SO COOL and makes up for the summary, which is a bit wanting. Noli Braddock is a girl with a mind of her own, and in an era of proper ladies, corsets, arranged marriages and the occasional steampunky transport, this means she’s viewed as wrong and sent to a reform school. It’s a horrible place, where an attempt is made to beat the individuality out of Noli until she’s a “proper” lady. But on mid-summer’s eve, she unknowingly makes a wish in just the right place at the just the right time, and ends up in the Otherworld, also known as the land of the fae. She’s a girl gifted with something called the Spark, and her sacrifice would keep the fae magic from collapsing in chaos and killing the entire fae civilization.
It all seems like such a cool idea, and I have to give Suzanne Lazear credit for it, but the entire thing simply falls flat in the execution.
For one, there’s barely much of a steampunk side to this novel. Noli is interested in building things, sure, and when we first meet her she illegally rides a hovercar she built out of scrap, but that’s about it when it comes to steampunk. It’s this joyride that’s the last straw on the proverbial camel’s back for the law and for her mother, who sends Noli to a reform school. This is where the novel nearly lost me entirely. I’m fine with a story doing things to move a character down a certain path, but…was all the abuse really necessary? It’s probably a personal thing, but I nearly put the book down because of it.
Second, there’s a love triangle. Yep. Mood killer. There’s Kevighn, who is the fae in charge of finding girls with the Spark for the sacrifice, and there’s Steven, who has been Noli’s best friend since they were children. The way Noli handles things here is smart, I do have to give her credit for that, but there’s so much see-sawing and waffling on what’s improper, etc etc etc.
Third — and I know this is silly but it really annoyed me — I got so sick of seeing the words “hoyden” (meaning delinquent) and “dollymop” (meaning loose woman) while I was reading. It’s like Lazear found the words out of some dictionary for the time period, and liked them so much that she used them over and over and OVER. They also seemed to be the only true period words out of the entire novel. I’m definitely not an expert in language, but nothing about the language screamed historical; everyone seemed to be speaking and thinking in a much more modern way than I’ve read in other steampunk and historical fiction novels. The only things that seemed to be right were dollymop, hoyden, and Noli being scandalized about wearing a sleeveless dress during the daytime or corsets on the outside of a dress. (You lie, book cover. You lie!)
Fourth, the ending was so rushed and seemed as though it was tacked on because the book needed closure in one or two aspects so that the rest of it could stay wide open for the second in the series. It was too neat, too simple, and the cliffhanger wasn’t much of a cliffhanger when the title of the chapter gave everything away.
I didn’t mean for this review to be entirely negative, but not one of the few things I enjoyed about the novel were strong enough to outweigh everything else. There were so many places to go and things to explore, but they all got left by the wayside for a problem that was wrapped up too easily, and for romance that had no true feeling to it.