Some DNF reviews are the hardest to write. The problem is
that there’s an impression that our “DNF” books are the worst we’ve read –
after all, what could be worse than a book we couldn’t manage to finish? Well it’s
certainly true for some of our DNFs, but most of our absolutely terrible books are
so bad that I feel almost compelled to keep reading either to fully describe
all their awfulness or in an almost train-wreck like ghoulish inability to look
away
This book is not awful. It is not terrible. But, at over
500 pages, it is long – and by the time I got to page 210, I, sadly, lost
interest. At this point the only supernatural things we’d had were a nifty
prologue and then lots of hints.
The prologue, set in classical times, was promising – we had
magic and prophecy and different factions and choices and clear challenges and
conflict and lots of nifty well written action. That prologue managed to keep
me going for pages.
But after that we focus on Felix, a fairly ordinary
teenaged boy who is clearly going to become the protagonist special one with
lots of power. And there’s a lot of good things about this character – he has
recently lost his parents in a terrible accident (which totally won’t be an accident)
and he is an excellent depiction of someone suffering trauma. His guilt, his
grief, his pain is all very realistic – it’s really well done and built into
his character
What isn’t built into the character is the actual plot.
And for 200 pages I’ve been following Felix around waiting for something to
happen beyond him pining after a beautiful girl, playing football, drinking
coffee and portraying his excellently depicted trauma.
We do get lots of fake outs. Like he’ll apparently be
attacked and there’ll be action and a possibility of plot… but it’s a dream (it
so wasn’t a dream. No it’s not a dream. Damnation don’t just let this lie as a
dream!). And then he’ll see a woman in odd clothes on campus who runs… so he
chases her. Who does that? It’s the middle of the night and he sees a strange
woman and just decides to chase her?! But anyway he decides she’s a vampire or
a ghost (this is NOT a magical incorporated world) and ends up exploring
tunnels and crypts and then… going home.
Oh how I seethed.
