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Inarora's Excursion
Inarora Beservera, daughter of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of End'oria, never felt concerned by her father's position. After all, politicians' families were only targeted in the Corporate States of Naa'ran, right? She's in for a rude awakening when Naa'ran Supremacists attack her and send her over 50 years into the past!
Inarora finds her great-grandpas, who send a letter to the Council of Sorcerers to ask for help. While they wait for a response, Inarora learns more about herself, including scary powers she never knew she possessed.
Meanwhile, Kaedan’s mounting frustration with the lack of help from the present day Intelligence Ward leads him to take matters into his own hands when another child goes missing—Inarora’s best friend.
Can Kaedan find Inarora and her friend before more children go missing? Or will they remain forever lost due to the Intelligence Ward’s negligence?
Inarora finds her great-grandpas, who send a letter to the Council of Sorcerers to ask for help. While they wait for a response, Inarora learns more about herself, including scary powers she never knew she possessed.
Meanwhile, Kaedan’s mounting frustration with the lack of help from the present day Intelligence Ward leads him to take matters into his own hands when another child goes missing—Inarora’s best friend.
Can Kaedan find Inarora and her friend before more children go missing? Or will they remain forever lost due to the Intelligence Ward’s negligence?
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First published September 22, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 12, 2025
This wasn’t my usual fare since it’s centred around a child protagonist. I have nothing against children’s books and have enjoyed a fair few even after becoming an adult, especially when my children were young. But these days, I can’t even enjoy a YA book, so a children’s book wasn’t something I thought I’d enjoy.
Boy, was I wrong.
This is so much more than a children’s book for one. Though Inorara or Ina, is the protagonist, the story isn’t theirs alone. It’s also their father’s, their grandfather’s, their great grandfathers’, and their friends’.
Ina is the daughter of a minister and belongs to a dragon species with a humanoid appearance. At the start of the book, Ina goes by she, but by the end of the book, they have figured out they like to be they. So, I’ll be referring to Ina by they in this review.
Ina has terrible nightmares that show them hurting their loved ones. The nightmares have given them a lot of anxiety and a fear of falling asleep. They are 12 and live with their father and grandfather. When an attack by some unknowns sends them to the past, Ina winds up with her great grandparents, one of whom had been dead for ages in their own time.
Lysander and Seri are understandably startled by Ina’s arrival and by their assertion that they’re their great granddaughter. Their children are still only children, but all the same, they can’t turn Ina away and are determined to help them get back to their time.
Back in the present, Ina’s father and grandfather are doing everything they can to find them, but when the Intelligence Ward, which is like the police, stonewalls them, and Byron, Ina’s grandfather is cursed when attempting to trace their whereabouts using magic, they realise that they may be up against something they may not be able to handle by themselves.
I loved the characters and the relationships. Found families are my favourite thing to read, and there’s very strong found family vibes between Lysander and Seri and their neighbours, as well as between Ina’s father and the parents of their best friends. Ina and their friends are also a found family that’s heartwarming.
Part of the tale of Ina and their situation, we have mental health, queer, neurodivergent reps, as well as chronic pain and disability reps. Needless to say, I enjoyed it all, and I loved how respectfully everything is treated.
If you love a wholesome tale of family, found family, characters that feel real and relatable, you would love this story.
Boy, was I wrong.
This is so much more than a children’s book for one. Though Inorara or Ina, is the protagonist, the story isn’t theirs alone. It’s also their father’s, their grandfather’s, their great grandfathers’, and their friends’.
Ina is the daughter of a minister and belongs to a dragon species with a humanoid appearance. At the start of the book, Ina goes by she, but by the end of the book, they have figured out they like to be they. So, I’ll be referring to Ina by they in this review.
Ina has terrible nightmares that show them hurting their loved ones. The nightmares have given them a lot of anxiety and a fear of falling asleep. They are 12 and live with their father and grandfather. When an attack by some unknowns sends them to the past, Ina winds up with her great grandparents, one of whom had been dead for ages in their own time.
Lysander and Seri are understandably startled by Ina’s arrival and by their assertion that they’re their great granddaughter. Their children are still only children, but all the same, they can’t turn Ina away and are determined to help them get back to their time.
Back in the present, Ina’s father and grandfather are doing everything they can to find them, but when the Intelligence Ward, which is like the police, stonewalls them, and Byron, Ina’s grandfather is cursed when attempting to trace their whereabouts using magic, they realise that they may be up against something they may not be able to handle by themselves.
I loved the characters and the relationships. Found families are my favourite thing to read, and there’s very strong found family vibes between Lysander and Seri and their neighbours, as well as between Ina’s father and the parents of their best friends. Ina and their friends are also a found family that’s heartwarming.
Part of the tale of Ina and their situation, we have mental health, queer, neurodivergent reps, as well as chronic pain and disability reps. Needless to say, I enjoyed it all, and I loved how respectfully everything is treated.
If you love a wholesome tale of family, found family, characters that feel real and relatable, you would love this story.
December 5, 2024
I have never written a book review for a website before, because I don’t really think my subjective assessment of a book’s quality should be the determining factor in whether or not someone else purchases it – I don’t want that responsibility! However, I am making an exception in the case of Inarora’s Excursion because I do not believe the book meets the minimum standard of coherence required to make it morally acceptable to sell to people for money. I feel that so little attention has been paid to plot, character, and worldbuilding that the book is effectively incoherent, and that it would be impossible for me to recommend for someone to purchase at any price point.
Unfortunately, the book’s plot does not withstand even brief scrutiny and makes no sense. A group of nations has recently won a war against ‘the Council’, a collection of sorcerers who have also somehow taken control of every country’s Intelligence Ward (effectively, each country’s CIA) for reasons which are not clear. In spite of apparently winning the war against the Council, apparently nothing has changed and the Council remains in control of the Wards, a fact that everyone is aware of and takes for granted – it is not a secret that the CIA of each country is apparently controlled by a hostile foreign power and nobody is doing anything about it. During this war, Kaeden Beservera and his team evidently did something very heroic (the book never says what it is that they did) and as a result, many years later, his child and the children of his team members are being targeted by ‘Naa’ran Supremacists’ (Naa’ran is evidently a country but it is unclear what the connection is between Naa’ran and the Council or what a ‘Naa’ran Supremacist’ stands for or believes), which apparently consists of these Supremacists getting jobs as receptionists at the offices of therapists and waiting to see if one of their targets ever becomes a patient there so they can strike, even though their targets all appear to be well-known public figures that could easily be attacked anywhere at any time. When confronted with a target, the terrorists immobilize all bystanders with magic, negate the target’s own magic powers with a magical nullification field, and then cast a spell which sends their targets 50 years into the past. They do this because…well, again, it’s not clear.
Some dialogue suggests that they do this to punish Kaedan and his team for what they did during the war, while other dialogue suggests that they are attempting to prevent the children from repeating whatever horrible/heroic acts their parents committed/achieved during the war (again, the book makes no effort to ever explain what it is that Kaedan’s team did that was so amazing that they’re now being targeted this way).
Disregarding the why of attacking the children (which the book certainly does), attacking someone by sending them fifty years into the past is a very strange way to attack anyone. The level of technology in the world is hazily defined but seems somewhat more advanced than ours (they have phones that can make ‘holo-calls’), so to use 2024 in our world as a point of comparison, if I were sent fifty years into the past, I would find myself in 1974. That would certainly be inconvenient, but not necessarily dangerous; however, the book’s final scenes make it clear that the Naa’ran Supremacists were definitely under the impression that the children would die as a result of being sent into the past, which makes no sense (one of them shouts “You were supposed to die!” as they emerge from portals at a dramatically appropriate moment to attack the children). They have so far sent three children into the past, expecting them to die, either because they assumed the world of fifty years ago was so dangerous that the children would somehow be killed immediately on arrival, or because they have somehow confused their ‘kill that child’ spell with their ‘send that child into the past’ spell, not once or twice but on three separate occasions. If these are dangerous terrorists, why not simply kill the children when they ambush them and have them at their mercy, instead of sending them to the past, waiting for a month, and then trying to kill them in the past? Why do any of this?
My point here is not to deride the author per se; my point is that the author is charging money to people for a book to which the author has not paid sufficient attention as to make sure the book makes even the tiniest modicum of sense. I believe that it is inappropriate to take peoples’ money in return for a book which doesn’t make any sense. This is different than having with issues with characterization or messaging or writing style; these are subjective factors. No matter how much I think about it, I cannot make the plot of this book make any amount of sense. It is unacceptably slipshod and I do not believe the author should accept any amount of money in return for it.
Setting aside the incoherence of the plot, there are many other reasons why I was disappointed in Inarora’s Excursion. The book is extremely boring – after Inarora (one of the protagonists, along with her father, Kaedan) is sent into the past, she spends most of the book hanging out at her house with her great grandfathers, going to art supply shops, and watching movies. Her great grandfathers immediately accept that her story about being their great granddaughter from the future is true and let her move in with them indefinitely, they write a letter to the Council asking for help (even though everyone is sure that the Council will do nothing) and then spend most of the book waiting for a response to their letter. There is no conflict during this part of the book.
In the present, Kaedan and his father Byron are also waiting – in this case, they are waiting for the Intelligence Ward (which, again, is the Council) to take action to rescue Inarora (which everyone knows the Intelligence Ward will not do, yet they still wait). So both plots are essentially about two different groups of people in two different timelines dealing with the emotional impact of being left on read by someone you hate anyway. Again, there is very little actual conflict of any kind for this part of the book, which is about 75% of the entire book – there is some stuff about Byron getting cursed doing a magical ritual (which tells the characters nothing they didn’t already know anyhow), but no one ever seems all that concerned about it and it’s resolved without consequence at the start of one chapter and never mentioned again.
The characters are all essentially the same person, and they all talk and act roughly the same. One character, for example, is described as a silly jokester, but never actually does anything very silly or tells any jokes. The book in general is very fond of telling you things about the characters rather than showing you how these characters behave in organic ways. And since the characters basically always agree with one another about everything, never wind up in conflict, are never really placed in any substantial discomfort, and never really seem to be in much (or any) peril, it’s hard to feel like I’ve gotten to know them at all anyway. Everyone is sort of blandly polite and generically nice, which makes them feel interchangeable and boring.
Characters behave in ways that make no sense. For example, at one point Kaedan decides to ask his elderly father to go perform a taxing and dangerous magical ritual which may help them find his missing daughter; he can't because he is too busy filling out paperwork to adopt a kitten. In spite of this, the text appears to want us to feel that Kaedan is a terrific and devoted father. When his father gets sick as a result of this ritual, Kaedan is too busy to take him to the hospital, so his father is instead taken by a brand new character, Samuel, who immediately confesses to Byron that he’s had a crush on Byron for many years and they decide to embark on a relationship together that has no bearing on the plot. There are a pair of neighbour characters who show up and get relatively elaborate backstories, but if they vanished from the book, nothing about the plot would change.
The writing is circuitous and abstruse. Characters are forever thinking things like “Kaedan decided he would pursue either option A or option B. Admittedly, Kaedan thought that option A would be the best choice, and so he decided to do that. But option B was also not without its charms. Yet, he chose option A, in spite of the arguments in favour of option B. He would not do option B. Unless…” There are several spelling mistakes (‘wary’ where the author clearly means ‘weary’, ‘edition’ instead of ‘addition’, and a number of instances where the fantasy names of people or places in the world are spelled differently from instance to instance). The book constantly throws made up fantasy words at the reader, apparently assuming that these words themselves constitute worldbuilding, but never provides any of the context that would make them understandable (why do I care if a city was formerly the home of the ‘Mwanga elves’ if I don’t know what Mwanga elf is? What is ‘an kharg’?) Some of the book’s attempts at representation feel very iffy, especially a scene where Kaedan, who uses a wheelchair, has ‘wheelchair zoomies’ while his friends look on bemusedly. On another occasion, people yell at an innocent bystander for touching someone’s body without permission, when the person they are touching is using out of control chaos magic to potentially destroy a city – I think that would constitute one circumstance where it might be considered acceptable to grab someone without permission, but none of the book’s characters agree.
The author writes with exuberance and enthusiasm, but unfortunately has fallen down on the basic requirements of craft. I believe that with a lot more work and effort, and many more drafts that focus on telling a coherent story and injecting conflict, it might be possible to polish Inarora’s Excursion into a passable or acceptable story. However, as it is, the plot makes no sense, the characters are interchangeable, and the book, as a whole, is incredibly dull. I do not believe it’s acceptable to sell a book, for money, whose plot does not withstand even basic scrutiny without falling apart completely, as the plot of this book does. For this reason, I could not recommend purchasing Inarora’s Excursion for any amount of money.
Unfortunately, the book’s plot does not withstand even brief scrutiny and makes no sense. A group of nations has recently won a war against ‘the Council’, a collection of sorcerers who have also somehow taken control of every country’s Intelligence Ward (effectively, each country’s CIA) for reasons which are not clear. In spite of apparently winning the war against the Council, apparently nothing has changed and the Council remains in control of the Wards, a fact that everyone is aware of and takes for granted – it is not a secret that the CIA of each country is apparently controlled by a hostile foreign power and nobody is doing anything about it. During this war, Kaeden Beservera and his team evidently did something very heroic (the book never says what it is that they did) and as a result, many years later, his child and the children of his team members are being targeted by ‘Naa’ran Supremacists’ (Naa’ran is evidently a country but it is unclear what the connection is between Naa’ran and the Council or what a ‘Naa’ran Supremacist’ stands for or believes), which apparently consists of these Supremacists getting jobs as receptionists at the offices of therapists and waiting to see if one of their targets ever becomes a patient there so they can strike, even though their targets all appear to be well-known public figures that could easily be attacked anywhere at any time. When confronted with a target, the terrorists immobilize all bystanders with magic, negate the target’s own magic powers with a magical nullification field, and then cast a spell which sends their targets 50 years into the past. They do this because…well, again, it’s not clear.
Some dialogue suggests that they do this to punish Kaedan and his team for what they did during the war, while other dialogue suggests that they are attempting to prevent the children from repeating whatever horrible/heroic acts their parents committed/achieved during the war (again, the book makes no effort to ever explain what it is that Kaedan’s team did that was so amazing that they’re now being targeted this way).
Disregarding the why of attacking the children (which the book certainly does), attacking someone by sending them fifty years into the past is a very strange way to attack anyone. The level of technology in the world is hazily defined but seems somewhat more advanced than ours (they have phones that can make ‘holo-calls’), so to use 2024 in our world as a point of comparison, if I were sent fifty years into the past, I would find myself in 1974. That would certainly be inconvenient, but not necessarily dangerous; however, the book’s final scenes make it clear that the Naa’ran Supremacists were definitely under the impression that the children would die as a result of being sent into the past, which makes no sense (one of them shouts “You were supposed to die!” as they emerge from portals at a dramatically appropriate moment to attack the children). They have so far sent three children into the past, expecting them to die, either because they assumed the world of fifty years ago was so dangerous that the children would somehow be killed immediately on arrival, or because they have somehow confused their ‘kill that child’ spell with their ‘send that child into the past’ spell, not once or twice but on three separate occasions. If these are dangerous terrorists, why not simply kill the children when they ambush them and have them at their mercy, instead of sending them to the past, waiting for a month, and then trying to kill them in the past? Why do any of this?
My point here is not to deride the author per se; my point is that the author is charging money to people for a book to which the author has not paid sufficient attention as to make sure the book makes even the tiniest modicum of sense. I believe that it is inappropriate to take peoples’ money in return for a book which doesn’t make any sense. This is different than having with issues with characterization or messaging or writing style; these are subjective factors. No matter how much I think about it, I cannot make the plot of this book make any amount of sense. It is unacceptably slipshod and I do not believe the author should accept any amount of money in return for it.
Setting aside the incoherence of the plot, there are many other reasons why I was disappointed in Inarora’s Excursion. The book is extremely boring – after Inarora (one of the protagonists, along with her father, Kaedan) is sent into the past, she spends most of the book hanging out at her house with her great grandfathers, going to art supply shops, and watching movies. Her great grandfathers immediately accept that her story about being their great granddaughter from the future is true and let her move in with them indefinitely, they write a letter to the Council asking for help (even though everyone is sure that the Council will do nothing) and then spend most of the book waiting for a response to their letter. There is no conflict during this part of the book.
In the present, Kaedan and his father Byron are also waiting – in this case, they are waiting for the Intelligence Ward (which, again, is the Council) to take action to rescue Inarora (which everyone knows the Intelligence Ward will not do, yet they still wait). So both plots are essentially about two different groups of people in two different timelines dealing with the emotional impact of being left on read by someone you hate anyway. Again, there is very little actual conflict of any kind for this part of the book, which is about 75% of the entire book – there is some stuff about Byron getting cursed doing a magical ritual (which tells the characters nothing they didn’t already know anyhow), but no one ever seems all that concerned about it and it’s resolved without consequence at the start of one chapter and never mentioned again.
The characters are all essentially the same person, and they all talk and act roughly the same. One character, for example, is described as a silly jokester, but never actually does anything very silly or tells any jokes. The book in general is very fond of telling you things about the characters rather than showing you how these characters behave in organic ways. And since the characters basically always agree with one another about everything, never wind up in conflict, are never really placed in any substantial discomfort, and never really seem to be in much (or any) peril, it’s hard to feel like I’ve gotten to know them at all anyway. Everyone is sort of blandly polite and generically nice, which makes them feel interchangeable and boring.
Characters behave in ways that make no sense. For example, at one point Kaedan decides to ask his elderly father to go perform a taxing and dangerous magical ritual which may help them find his missing daughter; he can't because he is too busy filling out paperwork to adopt a kitten. In spite of this, the text appears to want us to feel that Kaedan is a terrific and devoted father. When his father gets sick as a result of this ritual, Kaedan is too busy to take him to the hospital, so his father is instead taken by a brand new character, Samuel, who immediately confesses to Byron that he’s had a crush on Byron for many years and they decide to embark on a relationship together that has no bearing on the plot. There are a pair of neighbour characters who show up and get relatively elaborate backstories, but if they vanished from the book, nothing about the plot would change.
The writing is circuitous and abstruse. Characters are forever thinking things like “Kaedan decided he would pursue either option A or option B. Admittedly, Kaedan thought that option A would be the best choice, and so he decided to do that. But option B was also not without its charms. Yet, he chose option A, in spite of the arguments in favour of option B. He would not do option B. Unless…” There are several spelling mistakes (‘wary’ where the author clearly means ‘weary’, ‘edition’ instead of ‘addition’, and a number of instances where the fantasy names of people or places in the world are spelled differently from instance to instance). The book constantly throws made up fantasy words at the reader, apparently assuming that these words themselves constitute worldbuilding, but never provides any of the context that would make them understandable (why do I care if a city was formerly the home of the ‘Mwanga elves’ if I don’t know what Mwanga elf is? What is ‘an kharg’?) Some of the book’s attempts at representation feel very iffy, especially a scene where Kaedan, who uses a wheelchair, has ‘wheelchair zoomies’ while his friends look on bemusedly. On another occasion, people yell at an innocent bystander for touching someone’s body without permission, when the person they are touching is using out of control chaos magic to potentially destroy a city – I think that would constitute one circumstance where it might be considered acceptable to grab someone without permission, but none of the book’s characters agree.
The author writes with exuberance and enthusiasm, but unfortunately has fallen down on the basic requirements of craft. I believe that with a lot more work and effort, and many more drafts that focus on telling a coherent story and injecting conflict, it might be possible to polish Inarora’s Excursion into a passable or acceptable story. However, as it is, the plot makes no sense, the characters are interchangeable, and the book, as a whole, is incredibly dull. I do not believe it’s acceptable to sell a book, for money, whose plot does not withstand even basic scrutiny without falling apart completely, as the plot of this book does. For this reason, I could not recommend purchasing Inarora’s Excursion for any amount of money.
October 5, 2024
Swallow you up. Very
Easy read. Love this book. Can't wait for the next one!
Easy read. Love this book. Can't wait for the next one!
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews