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A review by 8bitbrainstem
Analiese Rising by Brenda Drake
3.0
3 stars is more than generous for a book with such enormous potential that couldn’t seem to do anything well. I loved the premise, but the delivery left many, many things to be desired.
Analiese Rising is a supernatural fantasy surrounding a teenage girl, Analiese, who finds her name in a book given to her by a mysterious man right before he dies. She is told to return the book and some of the man’s other possessions to his grandson Marek who is just as determined as Ana to piece together the mysteries surrounding this list. They follow a trail of obscure clues across Europe, solving puzzles in hopes of recovering an ancient artifact hidden by Marek’s family for millennia. This artifact is tied to the lost powers of the ancient gods from every known religion across time and soon the two find themselves in the midst of an epic battle of the immortals thousands of years in the making. Analiese finds herself a central player in this battle when she learns she is a descendant of a Death God and possesses the ability to bring the dead back to life.
This book sounded so good before I picked it up. I struggled to stay engaged with the story which was primarily due to how little I cared about Ana. The author writes her as a bizarre collection of useless knowledge, contradictions and indecisiveness all wrapped up in the body of a clumsy, unaware, hormone-riddled teenage girl. Also, she’s adopted by her uncle’s family pretty early on in her life when her birth parents pass away so she is constantly referring to her cousin as her brother, uncle has her father, and biological parents as her parents. The whole thing is unnecessarily confusing to keep track of who she’s referring to.
One thing the author did well was including lots of minor gods from more well know religions in addition to more obscure deities that don’t often make the headliner on the fantasy scene. The only problem with this was the indeterminate and semi-random way in which gods were cast as either foes or allies to Ana. I couldn’t keep them all straight which led to more than one muttered cursing of the author’s good name.
This book also suffers from serious plot pacing issues. The first 50 pages or so are packed with plot-filled goodies, but once Ana and Marek team up things get pretty repetitive (and by that I mean prepare to read the same rehashed scene again and again and again). It takes the majority of the book for the two to locate the object and less than 30 pages to go through this vast, character heavy battle scene that determines the outcome of the story. And just like that, everything is over and conveniently wrapped up in the last 5 pages of the book with a hastily scrawled ending. I’m not a fan of lots and lots of pages for wrap ups once the story is over, but just like everything else about Analiese Rising, the ending seemed poorly managed. Maybe this ending would be more suited to a book intended to start a series, but it’s hard to tell whether the author plans to go forward with that or not. There is just no consistency throughout the story and it became increasingly frustrating to read at times.
All in all, this is a book I found to be extremely disappointing and likely wouldn’t recommend.
Analiese Rising is a supernatural fantasy surrounding a teenage girl, Analiese, who finds her name in a book given to her by a mysterious man right before he dies. She is told to return the book and some of the man’s other possessions to his grandson Marek who is just as determined as Ana to piece together the mysteries surrounding this list. They follow a trail of obscure clues across Europe, solving puzzles in hopes of recovering an ancient artifact hidden by Marek’s family for millennia. This artifact is tied to the lost powers of the ancient gods from every known religion across time and soon the two find themselves in the midst of an epic battle of the immortals thousands of years in the making. Analiese finds herself a central player in this battle when she learns she is a descendant of a Death God and possesses the ability to bring the dead back to life.
This book sounded so good before I picked it up. I struggled to stay engaged with the story which was primarily due to how little I cared about Ana. The author writes her as a bizarre collection of useless knowledge, contradictions and indecisiveness all wrapped up in the body of a clumsy, unaware, hormone-riddled teenage girl. Also, she’s adopted by her uncle’s family pretty early on in her life when her birth parents pass away so she is constantly referring to her cousin as her brother, uncle has her father, and biological parents as her parents. The whole thing is unnecessarily confusing to keep track of who she’s referring to.
One thing the author did well was including lots of minor gods from more well know religions in addition to more obscure deities that don’t often make the headliner on the fantasy scene. The only problem with this was the indeterminate and semi-random way in which gods were cast as either foes or allies to Ana. I couldn’t keep them all straight which led to more than one muttered cursing of the author’s good name.
This book also suffers from serious plot pacing issues. The first 50 pages or so are packed with plot-filled goodies, but once Ana and Marek team up things get pretty repetitive (and by that I mean prepare to read the same rehashed scene again and again and again). It takes the majority of the book for the two to locate the object and less than 30 pages to go through this vast, character heavy battle scene that determines the outcome of the story. And just like that, everything is over and conveniently wrapped up in the last 5 pages of the book with a hastily scrawled ending. I’m not a fan of lots and lots of pages for wrap ups once the story is over, but just like everything else about Analiese Rising, the ending seemed poorly managed. Maybe this ending would be more suited to a book intended to start a series, but it’s hard to tell whether the author plans to go forward with that or not. There is just no consistency throughout the story and it became increasingly frustrating to read at times.
All in all, this is a book I found to be extremely disappointing and likely wouldn’t recommend.