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A review by chloefeatherr
There's a Dagger in Your Back by Stacey Willis
adventurous
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
I really wanted to enjoy this but unfortunately it just didn’t grip me like I had hoped.
The plot and world building were very promising but as I progressed, I found it wasn’t holding my interest as much. I think ultimately, it needed more thorough structural and contextual editing to ease the flow of character development, the story arc, and the overall reasoning behind certain developments and choices made in the book.
I admire the effort and level of detail put into creating the urban fantasy world with complex histories and relations. I think this amount of world building however would have better suited a series rather than a stand alone, so that we could be more seamlessly eased into the world over time.
There were moments however where I didn’t fully grasp why certain things were happening or what the main plot was supposed to be. The focus of the narrative tended to veer off in different directions then stop short and abruptly jump into a new path, leaving the writing feeling fragmented.
One specific thing I need to mention is that the overuse of nouns instead of names started to not only confuse but irritate me (The Iman, The Blonde, The Detective, The Assassin, The Officer, The Syren, The Seelie, The Favoured for example) as there was often entire paragraphs where I was didn’t actually know who was talking. Especially when there are so many characters introduced in this book. This created a distance between the reader and the characters, meaning I wasn’t as gripped as I had hoped to be.
Another thing I noticed was that the writing style and switching of perspectives felt structurally clunky. For example, we would be reading one of Lorrin’s chapters (so you would expect it to be her POV) but it was in third person and the narration was omniscient, so it would drop inside Zemir’s head and share her thoughts/feelings (as though we were reading her first person perspective but inside Lorrin’s chapter), then bounce back into Lorrin’s head and read her POV, then be in third person again talking about them as though from a distance.
I don’t think this helped me take to either of the main characters to be honest, and I found their personalities to be quite capricious as the book progressed.
I think this work has a lot of promise and could be a very engaging urban fantasy, as the world and character relationships are there to be moulded into something great.
Thank you to the author for a gifted e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.
The plot and world building were very promising but as I progressed, I found it wasn’t holding my interest as much. I think ultimately, it needed more thorough structural and contextual editing to ease the flow of character development, the story arc, and the overall reasoning behind certain developments and choices made in the book.
I admire the effort and level of detail put into creating the urban fantasy world with complex histories and relations. I think this amount of world building however would have better suited a series rather than a stand alone, so that we could be more seamlessly eased into the world over time.
There were moments however where I didn’t fully grasp why certain things were happening or what the main plot was supposed to be. The focus of the narrative tended to veer off in different directions then stop short and abruptly jump into a new path, leaving the writing feeling fragmented.
One specific thing I need to mention is that the overuse of nouns instead of names started to not only confuse but irritate me (The Iman, The Blonde, The Detective, The Assassin, The Officer, The Syren, The Seelie, The Favoured for example) as there was often entire paragraphs where I was didn’t actually know who was talking. Especially when there are so many characters introduced in this book. This created a distance between the reader and the characters, meaning I wasn’t as gripped as I had hoped to be.
Another thing I noticed was that the writing style and switching of perspectives felt structurally clunky. For example, we would be reading one of Lorrin’s chapters (so you would expect it to be her POV) but it was in third person and the narration was omniscient, so it would drop inside Zemir’s head and share her thoughts/feelings (as though we were reading her first person perspective but inside Lorrin’s chapter), then bounce back into Lorrin’s head and read her POV, then be in third person again talking about them as though from a distance.
I don’t think this helped me take to either of the main characters to be honest, and I found their personalities to be quite capricious as the book progressed.
I think this work has a lot of promise and could be a very engaging urban fantasy, as the world and character relationships are there to be moulded into something great.
Thank you to the author for a gifted e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood and Murder