Hmmmm.... this is a book that begs for truth in advertising, I think. The blurb on Amazon said "A thrilling new Steampunk fantasy from a talented debut author", which sounded very promising indeed. And the cover art! Too cool!
As they say, you can't (and shouldn't) judge a book by its cover. In this case, awesome cover art drew me in along with the small blurb. I waited and waited to see if we ever got this in our library system, which we did not. Then I got lucky; my little sis had bought it and very graciously loaned it to me. And then it sat on my dining room table for months and months while I read a lot of other stuff. I finally decided to pick it up this weekend, mostly because I'm trying to do a better job at keeping up with my "to-be-read" piles!
I have to be honest with you, dear readers, I only read the first 50 pages of this book. I won't say it's awful because it may not be to some of you. But I just could not get into this book. Yes, it's Steampunk. Yes, it's a debut author (I'll argue on the "talented" claim). Yes, the cover art is wicked cool. And yes, on the surface, it sounded like a really good story. But... well... I found the writing to be a bit on the boring side, as well as not very clear when it came to the world building. I consider myself to be fairly well-read, but I was having a hard time figuring out just exactly what was going on.
As Nancy Pearl says, give any book 50 pages. If you're not loving it (or not intrigued enough to keep going), put the thing down and move on to something else. There is just not enough time to read them all to the end, especially the ones that you're struggling with!
As they say, you can't (and shouldn't) judge a book by its cover. In this case, awesome cover art drew me in along with the small blurb. I waited and waited to see if we ever got this in our library system, which we did not. Then I got lucky; my little sis had bought it and very graciously loaned it to me. And then it sat on my dining room table for months and months while I read a lot of other stuff. I finally decided to pick it up this weekend, mostly because I'm trying to do a better job at keeping up with my "to-be-read" piles!
I have to be honest with you, dear readers, I only read the first 50 pages of this book. I won't say it's awful because it may not be to some of you. But I just could not get into this book. Yes, it's Steampunk. Yes, it's a debut author (I'll argue on the "talented" claim). Yes, the cover art is wicked cool. And yes, on the surface, it sounded like a really good story. But... well... I found the writing to be a bit on the boring side, as well as not very clear when it came to the world building. I consider myself to be fairly well-read, but I was having a hard time figuring out just exactly what was going on.
As Nancy Pearl says, give any book 50 pages. If you're not loving it (or not intrigued enough to keep going), put the thing down and move on to something else. There is just not enough time to read them all to the end, especially the ones that you're struggling with!
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