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kellyd 's review for:
Stormdancer
by Jay Kristoff
Now I want to start by saying this is not a bad book. Not at all. And for a debut, it is pretty good; however, I do believe it would have been all the better if it had gone through another round of editing.
The first 50 or so pages were hard to get through. And I mean HARD. Like, if I hadn't read from other reviews that it got better after that, I probably wouldn't have finished. And I had to skim. I hate skimming. One of the biggest problems this book had was description. It was entirely too bogged down with description. It dragged the beginning, making it both boring and confusing. This continued throughout the book. One object could be the center of description several different times in lengthy paragraphs. Also, sayings were repeated a little too often. I understand the point of them and I did like them but they were so over used that the poignancy and impact were lost a little.
Furthermore, there is a glossary. Not that that is bad but the story relies to heavily on people reading the glossary to understand the novel. I think that that is a dangerous road to go on for any author. If someone doesn't know there is a glossary (which the likelihood increases if they are reading on an e-reader) and they don't have a familiarity with Japanese words and culture, they are going to be thoroughly lost. Drowning lost. And the sign of a good writer is that there is enough context that if someone doesn't understand a word or gesture they can figure that out. Unfortunately, that was lacking from the book.
Also, I felt the loves in the book were a little underdeveloped. I never felt fulling invested in one of them at all because there wasn't much foundation for the love and that reduced the impact of the plot twist.
Now that probably sounds like I didn't like it at all. Which is untrue. I did like it but I definitely think it would have ranked much higher for me if the author had had better control over his prose. That's all. Now, I loved the premise. I mean, Japanese steampunk, come on! I've never read anything like it. I was intrigued and I did finish. The deaths at the end were moving and I do think it is very brave -and necessary- to have deaths to show the high stakes in this sort of story.
Overall, if you love description or if you won't let it ruin a good story, I would recommend this book. If not, give it a pass.
The first 50 or so pages were hard to get through. And I mean HARD. Like, if I hadn't read from other reviews that it got better after that, I probably wouldn't have finished. And I had to skim. I hate skimming. One of the biggest problems this book had was description. It was entirely too bogged down with description. It dragged the beginning, making it both boring and confusing. This continued throughout the book. One object could be the center of description several different times in lengthy paragraphs. Also, sayings were repeated a little too often. I understand the point of them and I did like them but they were so over used that the poignancy and impact were lost a little.
Furthermore, there is a glossary. Not that that is bad but the story relies to heavily on people reading the glossary to understand the novel. I think that that is a dangerous road to go on for any author. If someone doesn't know there is a glossary (which the likelihood increases if they are reading on an e-reader) and they don't have a familiarity with Japanese words and culture, they are going to be thoroughly lost. Drowning lost. And the sign of a good writer is that there is enough context that if someone doesn't understand a word or gesture they can figure that out. Unfortunately, that was lacking from the book.
Also, I felt the loves in the book were a little underdeveloped. I never felt fulling invested in one of them at all because there wasn't much foundation for the love and that reduced the impact of the plot twist.
Now that probably sounds like I didn't like it at all. Which is untrue. I did like it but I definitely think it would have ranked much higher for me if the author had had better control over his prose. That's all. Now, I loved the premise. I mean, Japanese steampunk, come on! I've never read anything like it. I was intrigued and I did finish. The deaths at the end were moving and I do think it is very brave -and necessary- to have deaths to show the high stakes in this sort of story.
Overall, if you love description or if you won't let it ruin a good story, I would recommend this book. If not, give it a pass.