Reviews
Finishing this book i was sure i would find many reviews similar to mine,but apparently I’m a part of the few that didn’t love it.. I don’t know what to say about this book. I was SO EXCITED when i bought it. The looks of the book, the mystery website, everything about it made me want to buy it without hesitation. I actually thought it was going to be a fantasy book but i would say it was more sci-fi, which I’m not that into. But this book was confusing. I have been reading fantasy my whole life and i like to think that my imagination is pretty good but i could not for the life of me get a grip on this book. I got no images in my head whilst reading this, the faces of the characters - blank, the locations - blank, everything - blank. I only saw the words on the pages, that was it. The writing was not in my taste and sometimes a bit repetitive. And the plot? I don’t know. When trying to explain to my friends what this book was about i could barely do it. I don’t know if my expectations were to high or if it’s just me who does not get the book, but i was quite disappointed. I feel like the author had a really good concept and idea for the book but focused more on the mystery around the book than the actual story. At least i got a gorgeous new book in my bookshelf.
DNF.
Pages read: 103/460
While the ideas in this book [the characters, the plot, the world-building] are interesting, the actual execution is... lacking. My main reason for dropping this book is the shallow/poor writing style. Things happen that I feel should have impact yet they do not, the descriptions of Fionith [a female character] are offending, and it reads more like a third-rate fanfiction, complete with "witty" dialogue and incorrect grammar. I wish I had maybe read a preview or flicked through the book before I bought it because, from page 30, I was not liking the writing style.
I do think, however, if I were 13-16 I would enjoy this book. Teenage me would have liked the humour a lot more and, due to having read less at that point, probably would have not minded the writing style as much.
It's not a horrible book, but I wouldn't call it good either. I simply have better books to read and spend my time on.
Hmm...honestly, this is one of those books that are rather difficult to review. If you were going to read this without any foreknowledge, you'll definitely be in for a delightful treat. The author not only throws you into a story composed of equal parts fantasy and science fiction, but for those that have a strong literary diet and crave novelty then you'll also be in for a pleasant morsel of tasty metafiction. The setting takes place in a universe composed of many side-by-side Innesomids, which are basically parallel worlds that are unique in their people and construction and can be traveled between. In this universe there are worlds similar to our own featuring really cool steampunk-like mechanical tech, worlds that shape themselves to our very own desires, worlds that permit the creation of things from thought alone, and even wacky worlds such as those that live entirely within a Turner painting! World-building is definitely one of, if not the most strongest feature of this novel. You'll get a delightful serving of fantastical creatures and endearing minor characters such as found in some cutesy Disney Pixar movie. This is also where the aforementioned metafictional element plays heavily. Not only are you caught off guard pretty early on with an interactive narrator with charmingly impeccable manners, but since fictional worlds being created from thought alone drives much of the magic in this universe, we as readers also get to witness this story itself being subject to that same vein of meta-breaking-the-fourth-wall-ness. Adding further magic to this piece is the amusing spin on our language and terminology. In fact, included with the physical copy of this book is an artsy bookmark that also functions as a dictiona…*ahem*...I mean definitionary and simultaneous pronouncery. Yes, I know, somewhat cheesy, but I kinda like it and you'll get used to more of this as you progress further into the book. Some of the magic / sci-fi elements are really cool in this story too. I really enjoyed some of the ways characters are able to manipulate reality in this novel, such as taking one's hand and plucking one's surroundings out of the air and replacing it with another, or splaying out one's memory as if it was a digital carousel on one's computer screen, and expanding or contracting memory images like one would Minority Report style that is now so ubiquitous in use on our digital devices. The imagery the author paints is quite vivid and imaginative too, bringing me back to my childhood days reading something like Harry Potter. Character-wise we mainly follow these two twins that remind me of the Winchester brothers in the American TV series, Supernatural, except for the fact that they bicker way much more all throughout the book! They seem to act as agents off on this mission for a secret organization they work for (yes, very U.K./espionage-esque of them, haha), and we get to witness their adventures as they gallop from one magical world to the next trying to solve this mystery of these missing children. And gosh, indeed do they and everybody else seem to always think of the children! Not only is the plot of this story centered around them, but every character's relationships with each other happen to stem from some kind of theme of abandoning or abandonment that has occurred. Okay…*sigh*...now for the hard part...the criticism. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I'm going to try my best to articulate it. And I'm really really hoping 🤞 I don't come across as too harsh as it seems this author and team behind the book are good people (every sale of this book gets directly donated to the Goodheart Animal Sanctuaries for example). The author/team also seem to go out of their way to interact personally with their readers with gratitude (both on Twitter and Instagram for example), which is something I find endearing and has definitely earned a place in my heart. However, if I am to uphold my dearest principles of honesty and truth, then I'll have to also explain what didn't exactly sit well with me. Okie dokes, so the best way I can sum this up is that there was something off about this book's pacing and cadence, so much so that I found it quite off-putting in how it affected the core structure of this book. It started off with the incessant teeter-tottering between comedic-relief and seriousness with the main characters. I understand that this was the type of entertainment that the author wanted to depict in this relationship dynamic, but it seemed to have been milked too much to the point of being rather unrealistic. It calls to mind something similar to a Terry Prachett novel, but for some reason it didn't fit with what I thought the author was going for (and certainly was nothing too philosophical. Some basic ethical stances are injected, most likely stemming from the author's personal views, but nothing too deep or nuanced here). This unsettling cadence of the novel was further potentiated with the author's almost amphetamine-induced manic writing style, with meandering plotlines flitting from scene to scene, reminiscent of oneiric/dream logic where continuity of thought plays second fiddle to wildly imaginative descriptions of scenery or brief snippets of cheeky dialogue. It's almost as if scenes are sketched out and then yanked right out from under you just so that the author can fulfill their love for inserting sassy back-and-forth banter between certain characters. And let it be noted that I'm definitely okay with tracking my line of thought through this mayhem (I mean, it definitely can't get worse than certain German philosophers that I've read), but the part that I found troubling was that this upset my flow of emotional investment into the particular scene and had a staccato-like interruption effect on my suspension of disbelief needed to completely immerse myself. And this kept happening over and over again. I know some authors can get carried away with their love for this type of writing, but editors, you gotta rein this in! In fact, this novel was incredible in its world-building, but because of the above the novel came across as world-building for world-building's sake. To make matters worse, many of the characters are rather one/two-off and are introduced and then never really play any further part in driving the plot forward. Take for instance Ectrovea's awesome kick-butt little Tuilieg girls which start out the novel and then we rarely even hear about them until briefly at the very end such that it is so inconsequential as to not matter much at all. The same can be said for Mikey and the briefcase scene, Grace and her role as daughter to Nate, Mansfield and the mechanical horses, Cettreis and her relationship, Prince Regent Eblon...and the list goes on! This extraneous worldbuilding builds up so much so that we never really even experience the real meat of the story until roughly 3/4's of our way into the novel! Again, this might just be nitpicking the author's natural writing style, but I would have really preferred a more causally interwoven novel with less extraneous flights of fancy. It makes the novel come across as a Marvel superhero-type movie--incredibly enjoyable in short manic bursts with delightfully entertaining character quips, but proves to be rather empty calorie-wise when mulled over in its entirety. One never-ending Scariodintt if you will ;) And I guess if I'm being honest, that's where most of my beef lies. Am I alone in thinking this and just totally uncalibrated in my expectations? 😱 I searched the web and also read many of the reviews here on Goodreads about this book. For some reason, nobody seems to go into too deep or thorough of a review and they all pretty much parrot each other with no original thought or nuanced critique. Are they stuck in a hive-mind induced Hitherentt? Did they even read the whole book before hyping everything up through some sort of recursive group virtue-signaling? Okay okay, I'll stop here and I apologize if this is a bit mean to be assuming bad motives on the part of others. I mean, this also can be partially explained by not many people having access to or knowing about this book to give it a decent enough review. From here on out I'll try to adopt a charitable belief, but I just wanted to sincerely express some of my thoughts in candor. Anyways, with my probably too-harsh criticism aside, did I mention this first book was only the Prologue? Yup, that might explain some of the author's emphasis on world-building at the expense of pacing. Regardless, it implies that there might potentially be other books coming out, and it seems like the right thing to do is to give this author another chance and grant some of my time to read and digest that novel too once it comes out (and if need be, update my review accordingly). Here's me sincerely wishing the best for the next book to be brilliant 😊 And on a last note, this book came with a neat Augmented Reality component that functions through an app you can download on your device. The latter's GUI seems to be developed with phones in mind, rather than tablets (it has certain sizing issues), so just keep that in mind. The physical book itself came in luxuriously beautiful packaging and the book is one of the prettiest things on my shelf right now. Kudos to the aesthetic team members behind this! Oh, and again, thank you for being really awesome beings and caring about animals ❤️
I loved this book, although there were times I found it hard to follow. The book itself is beautiful, and the writing is wonderful.
Gun to my head I would not be able to give any sort of comprehensive synopsis BUT I know I enjoyed it and can’t wait for the rest of the series!
