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Review: Inherited Danger

Inherited Danger (The Dawning of Power #2) by Brian Rathbone

I give this book a 3.

Okay

This book picks up just after the end of the first book…because it had too. Needless to say, I didn’t like the way the first book ended, but since it rolled over so evenly into the second one, I was more open-minded to continue reading the story. (I bounced back and forth between listening and reading on my Kindle.)

In this follow-up to the Call of the Herald, Catrin goes on a “Lord of the Rings” type journey in search of…I think, the understanding of her power. The style of this story seemed a bit different from the first book, but after I got used to it, it wasn’t too bad. My major complaint is that not a lot happens for a long time and then everything seemed to happen all at once.

It was nice to learn more about Catrin’s background and that of her friends, even though, outside of Benjin (can’t remember how this is spelled), the others characters seem to do very little. There are tons of new characters introduced and some of them are even still alive at the end of the book, and who knows they may appear in the next story.

The understanding of the role of Herald isn’t clarified explicitly, but I think this is a good thing. It gives the reader room to decide if the Herald is a vessel for good or evil before seeing how things will play out in the story. At this point, it could still go either way for Catrin, especially since she can’t seem to decide if she’s a strong feisty fighter or a meek lost child. Sometimes she takes hold of the situation and uses her powers boldly and other times, she makes me think of a young wizard hold out his wand with his eyes closed hoping that he’s doing something right. I want Catrin to be a stronger woman than acts like sometimes.

Also, some of the relationships in this book are too quick or underdeveloped. Catrin meets her grandmother and a few passages later, we’re on to something else.

After saying all this, I want to be clear that I did enjoy this story, just not as much as I did the first one. I’ll eventually continue the series and would recommend it to fans of epic fantasy.

See my review of The Call of the Herald here.

This review has been posted to GoodReads. If you’d like to obtain a copy of this book, try this link.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post. If you like it let me know and share it with others. See you next time, Toi Thomas. #thetoiboxofwords

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Review: Death of the Mad Hatter

Death of the Mad Hatter by Sarah J. Pepper

I give this book a 3 and a ½, but am indecisively bumping it down to a 3.

Okay

I’m not a traditionalist in the basic sense of the word. I appreciate things for what they are, but I was disappointed in this reading experience and probably not for the reasons you may think.  Overall, I commend this author for the ingenuity of taking a classical, commonly known, story and turning it into something completely new, but beyond that, I have issues.

First off, I was expecting this story to be more New Adult than YA (not a big fan of YA, but was willing to give New Adult a try). I had so much trouble taking, what I believe was supposed to be, the serious aspects of this story seriously because of all the high school banter. For YA fans I’m sure this isn’t a problem, but for me it was.

There is more than a good amount of crazy in this story and the added darkness was great, but some of the repetition came off as annoying, and I think it was supposed to be mysterious or add to the “crazy”. Crazy I get, but sometimes even that didn’t seem to quite hit the mark. In the story, we are supposed to have an understanding that Al is tortured, but it just comes off as silly and weird playtime to me, most of the time.

The best part of the story development, to me, was the notion and significance of the “sweets” being the link to either sanity or insanity. As far as logic goes, I know it’s Wonderland and there doesn’t necessarily need to be any logic, but there were some things that either did or didn’t happen that really didn’t make sense to the overall goals of the characters.

I loved the rummperrabit and the spiders! I was not disappointed that I read this book; it really wasn’t that bad. I’m just disappointed that I didn’t like it more. I’m such a fan of all things Wonderland, but this story was only okay.

Still, I’d recommend this to anyone who likes Wonderland tales, fantasy, and or YA fiction, with the mention that this is a little dark.

This review has been posted to GoodReads. If you’d like to obtain a copy of this book, try this link.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post. If you like it let me know and share it with others. See you next time, Toi Thomas. #thetoiboxofwords

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Review: Call of the Herald

Call of the Herald by Brian Rathbone

I give this book a 4.

LikeIt

I have no idea how I originally got a copy of this book. I literally found a copy of it on my laptop and then downloaded it onto my Kindle. Later I looked it up on Amazon and downloaded a copy to compare, but there were no differences other than the covers.

The idea of being the chosen one is not a new concept and the reality of it is not without its ups and downs. So this is the story of Catrin and how she goes from being a farm girl to a (whole vessel of sorts) herald of war while possessing some neat and sometimes confusing “super powers”.

I must say that I like this story. It’s not without its flaws, but it’s good enough to pull me in and make me want to read more in the series. The story seemed like it was short, but it took a while to read. I guess what I’m trying to say here is that the pacing didn’t match the length of the book. Most of it all happened so fast, but nothing was left out, as far as I can tell.

It does end with a cliffhanger, which I do not like. I much prefer stories to reach some kind of resolution and then move on or change direction, but this is one of those stories that build up to… nothing and then you have to read the next book to see what happens.

I think if these characters had simply come to some sort of destination and left an opening to the next book, I would have given it a 5, but as is, I’m too annoyed to do so.

Still, it’s a good story and worth reading if you like tales of “the one” and prophecies being fulfilled. It’s almost a space opera, it’s almost a high-fantasy epic, it’s almost a paranormal coming-of-age tale, but ultimately it’s an adventure.

This review has been posted to GoodReads. If you’d like to obtain a copy of this book, try this link.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post. If you like it let me know and share it with others. See you next time, Toi Thomas. #thetoiboxofwords