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A review by paragraphsandpages
The Spell Speakers by Day Leitao
2.0
First off, I would like to thank the publisher and author for providing me this ARC to review. Please note that the version I read was an advanced copy, and certain events/language may be changed in the published edition.
Stars (Out of 10): 3/10 Stars
Spoiler Free: This novella was meant to introduce the world and make readers more interested in the series, but I don’t really think this book did that at all. If I were to judge this novella purely on how well it accomplishes that task, it would’ve received 1 star. It barely bothered to explain the world at all, the one we were supposed to be growing interest in, and focused instead on a very oddly paced plot with characters that all read kind of the same.
Unfortunately, I found out pretty early on that I would most likely not be a fan of this novella. This revelation came purely from the writing style at first, as it felt super cut and dry, very simple and uninteresting. Instead of utilizing language to properly make readers feel and understand the world better, everything just felt stated. “Character A did this. Character B reacted like this.” It told more than it showed, which caused a major disconnect between me and the characters.
Additionally, the plot itself was fairly simple to guess, yet wasn’t aware of this. It not so subtly dropped many clues before every twist, so every reader would have actually picked up on it before it was revealed, but somehow our MC, Darian, was entirely clueless to everything going on around him. The pacing of the overall plot was also fairly weird. We had a very quick-moving start, almost as if we were dropped into the middle of a story, and then we get a lull in the middle, followed by a final chapter in Darian’s POV that suddenly dumps a bunch more information on the reader. When combined with the simple writing, it almost felt as if I was reading a very detailed outline of what the book was going to contain, instead of the book itself.
The world itself, as I mentioned above, is also just poorly explained. We learn nothing of the magic system (which is part of why I requested this novella, it sounded interesting), and almost nothing on the tension between the smaller villages and the kingdom, just that magic is the cause of it. It leaves readers in a limbo of who to believe, as we aren’t given a sympathetic outlook on either side. All we know is that the king is burning villages in search of a witch that is probably dead (but how do only the villages know this? Why doesn’t the king?) It’s all really confusing, so I’m trying not to dwell on it.
Lastly, I wasn’t able to get a grasp on almost any of the characters. While I overall did find Sian interesting, and the interplay of motives running through him, this same level of depth did not come through well in the other characters, and instead made them feel incontinuous. For example, with our main hero Darian, we don’t actually get to learn about life back in the village, or anything that makes us sympathetic to the cause Darian’s mother was fighting for. Furthermore, this makes his constant longing for his old life hard to empathize with, since we have no understanding of that life. His inner voice also seems to shift dramatically within the story, from a focus on home/hatred of the evil king, to a focus on love interest only, and then back to a focus on revenge/hatred without regard of said love interest. This imbalance actually comes through in that love interest as well, and I have a hard time gauging what her inner thoughts actually are, even after having read a POV chapter from her.
However, I was still intrigued. Even with everything above, I still want to learn more. Some might say that this want for more stems from the lack of content that the book provided me with in the first place, but I also didn’t expect much coming into this in terms of content (it is only 100 pages!)
Stars (Out of 10): 3/10 Stars
Spoiler Free: This novella was meant to introduce the world and make readers more interested in the series, but I don’t really think this book did that at all. If I were to judge this novella purely on how well it accomplishes that task, it would’ve received 1 star. It barely bothered to explain the world at all, the one we were supposed to be growing interest in, and focused instead on a very oddly paced plot with characters that all read kind of the same.
Unfortunately, I found out pretty early on that I would most likely not be a fan of this novella. This revelation came purely from the writing style at first, as it felt super cut and dry, very simple and uninteresting. Instead of utilizing language to properly make readers feel and understand the world better, everything just felt stated. “Character A did this. Character B reacted like this.” It told more than it showed, which caused a major disconnect between me and the characters.
Additionally, the plot itself was fairly simple to guess, yet wasn’t aware of this. It not so subtly dropped many clues before every twist, so every reader would have actually picked up on it before it was revealed, but somehow our MC, Darian, was entirely clueless to everything going on around him. The pacing of the overall plot was also fairly weird. We had a very quick-moving start, almost as if we were dropped into the middle of a story, and then we get a lull in the middle, followed by a final chapter in Darian’s POV that suddenly dumps a bunch more information on the reader. When combined with the simple writing, it almost felt as if I was reading a very detailed outline of what the book was going to contain, instead of the book itself.
The world itself, as I mentioned above, is also just poorly explained. We learn nothing of the magic system (which is part of why I requested this novella, it sounded interesting), and almost nothing on the tension between the smaller villages and the kingdom, just that magic is the cause of it. It leaves readers in a limbo of who to believe, as we aren’t given a sympathetic outlook on either side. All we know is that the king is burning villages in search of a witch that is probably dead (but how do only the villages know this? Why doesn’t the king?) It’s all really confusing, so I’m trying not to dwell on it.
Lastly, I wasn’t able to get a grasp on almost any of the characters. While I overall did find Sian interesting, and the interplay of motives running through him, this same level of depth did not come through well in the other characters, and instead made them feel incontinuous. For example, with our main hero Darian, we don’t actually get to learn about life back in the village, or anything that makes us sympathetic to the cause Darian’s mother was fighting for. Furthermore, this makes his constant longing for his old life hard to empathize with, since we have no understanding of that life. His inner voice also seems to shift dramatically within the story, from a focus on home/hatred of the evil king, to a focus on love interest only, and then back to a focus on revenge/hatred without regard of said love interest. This imbalance actually comes through in that love interest as well, and I have a hard time gauging what her inner thoughts actually are, even after having read a POV chapter from her.
However, I was still intrigued. Even with everything above, I still want to learn more. Some might say that this want for more stems from the lack of content that the book provided me with in the first place, but I also didn’t expect much coming into this in terms of content (it is only 100 pages!)