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A review by veronicadidato
Brimstone Born by Kenzie Kelly
adventurous
medium-paced
2.0
The premise had promise but the execution was underwhelming.
At first I found the MC’s snarky internal comments quite funny, but it soon lost its charm as that was all she had. There were no other thought going through her head - everything else was told to you. There was so much telling that it was impossible to connect with anything, character or scene. Don’t tell us what happened: show it so we can experience it together with the character.
The MC also has a life in the mortal world but it’s not until like 70% in that you learn that she has a best friend that she should contact. And then that supposed best friend is immediately forgotten again after that offhand comment. This book is really just “I had this idea and I want to write it but I don’t want to waste time on world building or establishing anything other than snarky woman sees hot dude, wanna smash”.
It reads quite like someone liked a power fantasy manga but didn’t want to invest effort into making it believable. It just seamlessly moved from one beat to the other, even the “problems” they encountered were dealt with easily. The one time there was some issues it was quickly brushed over so you never even had the chance to get emotionally involved.
Very disappointing overall.
At first I found the MC’s snarky internal comments quite funny, but it soon lost its charm as that was all she had. There were no other thought going through her head - everything else was told to you. There was so much telling that it was impossible to connect with anything, character or scene. Don’t tell us what happened: show it so we can experience it together with the character.
The MC also has a life in the mortal world but it’s not until like 70% in that you learn that she has a best friend that she should contact. And then that supposed best friend is immediately forgotten again after that offhand comment. This book is really just “I had this idea and I want to write it but I don’t want to waste time on world building or establishing anything other than snarky woman sees hot dude, wanna smash”.
It reads quite like someone liked a power fantasy manga but didn’t want to invest effort into making it believable. It just seamlessly moved from one beat to the other, even the “problems” they encountered were dealt with easily. The one time there was some issues it was quickly brushed over so you never even had the chance to get emotionally involved.
Very disappointing overall.