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A review by tobin_elliott
The Ancient Ones by Cassandra L. Thompson
adventurous
challenging
dark
informative
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.0
This one's a tough one for me...why? Because I follow the author across all sorts of social media, and I really respect her viewpoint on so many things.
But this, while it started out reasonably strong, just fell awfully short for me, which is a surprise. This was one of those books that I really expected to love.
And while I can point out certain elements in the novel that didn't work for me, I'm not sure I can point to a main, singular reason this didn't grab me like I thought it would.
The elements that didn't work for me were not big things.
I wasn't crazy about having too many characters with names starting with D. There was Davius, who is also, at times, David, or Great David in this. Then there's Dragos. And there's Danulf. And that's not even counting Dracul, who is namechecked several times.
There's a lot of history here, as well. I don't mind some history in my horror, I really don't, but Thompson doubles down on it, then doubles down on it again.
Here's my bigger issues. First and foremost—and this is purely my own taste—this book read far too Anne Rice for me. I'm not a fan of Rice's overly detailed, minute-by-minute history of characters from the dawn of time until present day. I find it tedious when she does it, and it truly started to grate on me here as well, despite the reasonably short 280 pages.
Aligned with that last fact, was how Thompson chose to try and mesh so many of the various pantheons of gods, from Greek and Roman, through Egyptian, and Christian, and then bolt on new vampire and werewolf myths to them. While the author was surprisingly successful at times, it became less and less fun when I found out that this character was also that god...and also that god...oh, and that one two. And this other character was also this god...and that god...and that other one over there...oh, and they're also related to this first character.
Honestly, it got so complex, and convoluted, that it began to feel like the plot was being contorted in unnatural ways just to be able to squeeze in one more collection of gods. By the time the Egyptian ones came in—and seemed quite important to the plot—I found was simply all out of fucks to give by that point.
There was also, finally, a point where I questioned whether there was a singular through-line for the plot. I can't say what it is without spoiling some stuff, so I won't, but I will say there is, but it just takes a long time to manifest.
What I came away with in this book is that there isn't a single character who is just a single character. And there are an awful lot of characters who start good and break bad, or start bad and break good.
So, here's my thing, maybe it was the multiple time periods/multiple religions that got to me. Maybe it was that I couldn't get the taste of Anne Rice out of my eyeballs, but I didn't enough this very much at all.
I'm hoping that most of the convolution is over with now, and the balance of the trilogy will be a little more straightforward.
But this, while it started out reasonably strong, just fell awfully short for me, which is a surprise. This was one of those books that I really expected to love.
And while I can point out certain elements in the novel that didn't work for me, I'm not sure I can point to a main, singular reason this didn't grab me like I thought it would.
The elements that didn't work for me were not big things.
I wasn't crazy about having too many characters with names starting with D. There was Davius, who is also, at times, David, or Great David in this. Then there's Dragos. And there's Danulf. And that's not even counting Dracul, who is namechecked several times.
There's a lot of history here, as well. I don't mind some history in my horror, I really don't, but Thompson doubles down on it, then doubles down on it again.
Here's my bigger issues. First and foremost—and this is purely my own taste—this book read far too Anne Rice for me. I'm not a fan of Rice's overly detailed, minute-by-minute history of characters from the dawn of time until present day. I find it tedious when she does it, and it truly started to grate on me here as well, despite the reasonably short 280 pages.
Aligned with that last fact, was how Thompson chose to try and mesh so many of the various pantheons of gods, from Greek and Roman, through Egyptian, and Christian, and then bolt on new vampire and werewolf myths to them. While the author was surprisingly successful at times, it became less and less fun when I found out that this character was also that god...and also that god...oh, and that one two. And this other character was also this god...and that god...and that other one over there...oh, and they're also related to this first character.
Honestly, it got so complex, and convoluted, that it began to feel like the plot was being contorted in unnatural ways just to be able to squeeze in one more collection of gods. By the time the Egyptian ones came in—and seemed quite important to the plot—I found was simply all out of fucks to give by that point.
There was also, finally, a point where I questioned whether there was a singular through-line for the plot. I can't say what it is without spoiling some stuff, so I won't, but I will say there is, but it just takes a long time to manifest.
What I came away with in this book is that there isn't a single character who is just a single character. And there are an awful lot of characters who start good and break bad, or start bad and break good.
So, here's my thing, maybe it was the multiple time periods/multiple religions that got to me. Maybe it was that I couldn't get the taste of Anne Rice out of my eyeballs, but I didn't enough this very much at all.
I'm hoping that most of the convolution is over with now, and the balance of the trilogy will be a little more straightforward.