Search This Blog

Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Two Fantasies (Beneath and Sorrow)

  Beneath   

Book description:  "Jess has heard the rumors, old folk tales of creatures that live beneath the water—dangerous shapeshifters with a taste for human children. She's dismissed them as crazy stories...until her best friend is stolen and Jess discovers all the legends are true."

This is a YA fairy tale with a romantic angle that doesn't work out as you might expect.  The problems with formatting in the ebook ARC were a little distracting, but I managed to stay in the story well enough, and the problems will be eliminated before publication-- although I couldn't find a link to a place to purchase.

I think a "tween" might enjoy this one, and there were some interesting elements, but overall, it didn't meet my expectations.

NetGalley/Floris Books
Ya/Fairy Tale/Supernatural.  July 1, 2014.
  
Sorrow is the third book in the Witch Ember series, but I've not read the previous novels.  Nor am I so inclined after finishing this one.  The prologue nearly lost me entirely in its boring detail.  The next problem was deciding who the heck was the protagonist.  I wasn't especially taken with the first character introduced, Phindol, but as it turned out, he wasn't really the protagonist, anyway.  Neither was Lord Ash.  OK - the book description did reveal that the protagonist was Faina, but it took long enough to get her in the story.  

I also found the made-up words annoying, they didn't flow naturally, and I found them distracting, rather than contributing to any sense of time or place. 

Faina was pitiful, unaware of how she was being used as an assassin-- and much too young at 14-15 for the connections with Lord Ash and Phindol and other sexual implications.   I really couldn't develop any genuine concern for the characters, not even Faina.   

Again, I couldn't find a link for purchasing.
NetGalley/Dragonwell Books
Science Fiction/Fantasy.  2009; Sept. 30, 2014.

5 comments:

  1. That's too bad about Sorrow. How aggravating.

    Beneath sounds interesting though.

    ReplyDelete
  2. These books have lovely cover art. It's a shame the novels didn't live up to your expectations.

    ReplyDelete
  3. It's a pity that the books didn't meet your expectations. I thought they'd be good at first glance of the covers, but alas. . .

    ReplyDelete
  4. It's always a bit frustrating when books are mediocre at best. I always think I could have been reading a really good book instead!

    ReplyDelete
  5. :) After a really good run for about a month, I'm having one of those cycles of "not so good."

    ReplyDelete