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A review by maudalorian
Nophek Gloss by Essa Hansen
adventurous
dark
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
3.5
I FEEL SO CONFLICTED. The first 35% or so of this really rubbed me the wrong way. I felt tricked by the blurb into buying a book with a 14-year-old protagonist, the found family trope felt VERY forced, and the whole thing just kind of read like discount Becky Chambers x Star Wars on steroids and it was all just way too WEIRD for me. But then the Casthen Harvest part started and I was hooked?! I have since decided that everything that rubbed me the wrong way was debut related, and have ordered the rest of the trilogy. Don't let me down, Hansen.
The good
The good
- I liked the concept of the nophek gloss
- I'm always down for some space elves and it looks like the Graven will deliver
- Threi was a delicious antagonist I'm sorry! Undeniably A Bad Person but still mysterious and complex enough to be interesting? Yes please
- Star Wars Rebels vibes
The bad
- The author seems to have confused multiverse universes with teleportation devices, which sucks for me, a person who rarely enjoys multiverses
- The main character's development was VERY staccato; he essentially just went through a series of neatly demarcated level-ups like a video game character
[this is where I conveniently age up] [this is where I conveniently get really strong] [this is where I conveniently process my core trauma in 5 pages] [this is where we need a jarring 10-year time jump because I will continue to feel like a 14y/o to the reader until I actually spend some time in the world] (Why not just write an ignorant 20y/o from the start and have an info dump uploaded to his brain at some point, instead of making it FUCKING WEIRD by insta-evolving a 14y/o into a 20y/o??)
The ugly
- All the horrific violence, torture, and animal cruelty began to feel gratuitous, especially with sci-fi tech immediately fixing most consequences in the blink of an eye anyway
- Seriously though did the kid have to get thrashed THAT MANY TIMES