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sreddous 's review for:
The Soul Thief
by Kim Richardson
There's a lot of really interesting stuff here. The plot is well-paced and the stakes are always high, and I'm personally a suckerrrr for scary monsters like soul-eating demons as a threat. The plot is well-organized that this was a quick (in a good way!) and engaging read.
What took me out of the experience enough that I call this a 2 (or maybe 2.5) out of 5 stars is all of the "girl hate." We spend a -lot- of pages focusing on petty, mean, bratty girls that have little impact on the plot. Pretty much every scene with Rebecca (the extremely-beautiful jilted ex of the main love interest) made me cringe and swipe really quickly through the pages to avoid it. Stuff like this happens so often that it makes me really uncomfortable -- Alexa says, after three days at Hallow Hall, that she "feels at home" with her "new friends" which is a bit rushed in general, but I'm bringing it up because we the audience don't get to see her actually have dialogue and friendship with any girls/women. It's to the point where women are not presented in this as individual people -- instead the main character is very quick to comment on how beautiful and fast at texting and catty they are (this kind of description doesn't happen to just Rebecca and her friends -- Metatron's assistants, the girls at the fair, etc). Even with Evelyn, Alexa can only figure that she's sad over the deaths specifically because Evelyn is a mother (as if... the only way to learn how to sympathize with suffering is to be a mother). Every woman abandons Alexa's big plan at the end. Is there...a message to be found here...? Even if the author DOESN'T have some big message about how women don't support each other as people, this is really inefficient. Cutting all of this bully dialogue wouldn't change the plot or the characters' motivations pretty much at all.
It's a waste -- I like the way the prejudice against angels was handled with Erik and his team at first, where they were cold, apprehensive, and untrusting but once they all fought together realized that prejudice was wrong. So adding additional bullies like Rebecca, Karen, and Lizzie doesn't further this 'prejudice' subplot. The world is about to be destroyed RIGHT NOW, and we're still getting lines like "Well then, let the better woman win" because Alexa is still fighting with Rebecca over Erik. I get that these characters are teen-aged and are therefore immature, but when the plot is built up to be life-or-death stakes, this is really frustrating, distracting stuff in what otherwise would be an engaging, interesting plot. Honestly, if this stuff wasn't here, I'd rate this a 4 at least. But, as it is, so much of this book focuses on this...treatment of the majority of the (speaking, alive lol) female characters, and it is so tonally-dissonant and unnecessary even for a YA/teen experience.
Overall, there IS a lot to like here -- the writing style is easy to get into flow with. The action scenes are good and there's enough of them that I was able to get back into things once I was done grinding my teeth in frustration over all the mean girl stuff. The monsters and the exposition around the Sensitives and their ways of doing things is all interesting enough that I'll check out further books in this series.
What took me out of the experience enough that I call this a 2 (or maybe 2.5) out of 5 stars is all of the "girl hate." We spend a -lot- of pages focusing on petty, mean, bratty girls that have little impact on the plot. Pretty much every scene with Rebecca (the extremely-beautiful jilted ex of the main love interest) made me cringe and swipe really quickly through the pages to avoid it. Stuff like this happens so often that it makes me really uncomfortable -- Alexa says, after three days at Hallow Hall, that she "feels at home" with her "new friends" which is a bit rushed in general, but I'm bringing it up because we the audience don't get to see her actually have dialogue and friendship with any girls/women. It's to the point where women are not presented in this as individual people -- instead the main character is very quick to comment on how beautiful and fast at texting and catty they are (this kind of description doesn't happen to just Rebecca and her friends -- Metatron's assistants, the girls at the fair, etc). Even with Evelyn, Alexa can only figure that she's sad over the deaths specifically because Evelyn is a mother (as if... the only way to learn how to sympathize with suffering is to be a mother). Every woman abandons Alexa's big plan at the end. Is there...a message to be found here...? Even if the author DOESN'T have some big message about how women don't support each other as people, this is really inefficient. Cutting all of this bully dialogue wouldn't change the plot or the characters' motivations pretty much at all.
It's a waste -- I like the way the prejudice against angels was handled with Erik and his team at first, where they were cold, apprehensive, and untrusting but once they all fought together realized that prejudice was wrong. So adding additional bullies like Rebecca, Karen, and Lizzie doesn't further this 'prejudice' subplot. The world is about to be destroyed RIGHT NOW, and we're still getting lines like "Well then, let the better woman win" because Alexa is still fighting with Rebecca over Erik. I get that these characters are teen-aged and are therefore immature, but when the plot is built up to be life-or-death stakes, this is really frustrating, distracting stuff in what otherwise would be an engaging, interesting plot. Honestly, if this stuff wasn't here, I'd rate this a 4 at least. But, as it is, so much of this book focuses on this...treatment of the majority of the (speaking, alive lol) female characters, and it is so tonally-dissonant and unnecessary even for a YA/teen experience.
Overall, there IS a lot to like here -- the writing style is easy to get into flow with. The action scenes are good and there's enough of them that I was able to get back into things once I was done grinding my teeth in frustration over all the mean girl stuff. The monsters and the exposition around the Sensitives and their ways of doing things is all interesting enough that I'll check out further books in this series.