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
  • 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