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Forbidden
Iris Winters lives in a realm surrounded by the Forest, a place where only the Hated live and where no one is allowed to enter. She lived by this rule her entire life until the day she was pulled in. Now she's one of them, trapped in a world full of their secrets and bad intentions. Though that isn't all, the Hated want to take over her realm and she must warn her people before it can happen, but how can she when she's trapped in a place where she is Hated?
194 pages, Paperback
First published June 30, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 29, 2015
Oh no. Oh no, no, no. I'm about to review an unknown book by an indie author and give it one star. The deja vu is strong and terrifying.
This case is a little different than the Situation That Shall Not Be Named because this book truly did have promise. I see where the author was going, I get what she was trying to do, and parts of it actually worked. I feel like there is a genuinely decent story buried in here somewhere. It just desperately, desperately needs an editor.
My first inkling that something was amiss came on page one (OH NO) but as it was something small, I kept going. It turned out to be an issue that kept cropping up throughout the book. Constantly vague writing! Vague in a way that isn't mysterious, it's... I'm not even sure.
"And that's when I first saw it-- the thing, the whateveritwas..."
That's an actual line. The thing. The whateveritwas. I think we're supposed to take away from this that the item was fairy made and so magical that she couldn't know what it was on sight. Except a few paragraphs later she tells us with no trouble at all exactly what it is. So what's the point of that first part? What's the point of all the times it happens again later? I don't know.
The farther in we go the more grammar issues we see. There's a ridiculous amount of misused punctuation and capitalization that would be incredibly easy for even the most novice editor to pick out. The worst of it? The absolutely constant run on sentences on every single page.
"I didn't want to admit it, afraid that if I admitted it, it would only make this experience more real, and I was terrified, absolutely frightened and if I could move I would most likely be jumping as high as a fish removed from water."
What?
""He wasn't really my father, he was my stepfather, my real dad died a few years after my birth from a rare disease, but my stepdad was the only father I'd ever known."
Understandable but still, that could have been broken up in at least a place or two.
A fair amount of each and every paragraph would just be one very, very long sentence. On and on they would go until I had honestly forgotten the first part of the sentence and would have to start over to figure out how we ended up here. Then, when the sentences weren't run ons, they rarely made any sense.
"I heard the cloak of the one at my right side move and touch my side as they kneelt down and a hand stroke my cheek."
That's all word for word, by the way. They kneelt down.
All of this said, I'll say it again, there is a good story here. The fey world this author created is interesting and lovely. She just needs to figure out how to tell it. With a few beta reader friends and an editor, good things could happen. They just, unfortunately, don't happen here.
This case is a little different than the Situation That Shall Not Be Named because this book truly did have promise. I see where the author was going, I get what she was trying to do, and parts of it actually worked. I feel like there is a genuinely decent story buried in here somewhere. It just desperately, desperately needs an editor.
My first inkling that something was amiss came on page one (OH NO) but as it was something small, I kept going. It turned out to be an issue that kept cropping up throughout the book. Constantly vague writing! Vague in a way that isn't mysterious, it's... I'm not even sure.
"And that's when I first saw it-- the thing, the whateveritwas..."
That's an actual line. The thing. The whateveritwas. I think we're supposed to take away from this that the item was fairy made and so magical that she couldn't know what it was on sight. Except a few paragraphs later she tells us with no trouble at all exactly what it is. So what's the point of that first part? What's the point of all the times it happens again later? I don't know.
The farther in we go the more grammar issues we see. There's a ridiculous amount of misused punctuation and capitalization that would be incredibly easy for even the most novice editor to pick out. The worst of it? The absolutely constant run on sentences on every single page.
"I didn't want to admit it, afraid that if I admitted it, it would only make this experience more real, and I was terrified, absolutely frightened and if I could move I would most likely be jumping as high as a fish removed from water."
What?
""He wasn't really my father, he was my stepfather, my real dad died a few years after my birth from a rare disease, but my stepdad was the only father I'd ever known."
Understandable but still, that could have been broken up in at least a place or two.
A fair amount of each and every paragraph would just be one very, very long sentence. On and on they would go until I had honestly forgotten the first part of the sentence and would have to start over to figure out how we ended up here. Then, when the sentences weren't run ons, they rarely made any sense.
"I heard the cloak of the one at my right side move and touch my side as they kneelt down and a hand stroke my cheek."
That's all word for word, by the way. They kneelt down.
All of this said, I'll say it again, there is a good story here. The fey world this author created is interesting and lovely. She just needs to figure out how to tell it. With a few beta reader friends and an editor, good things could happen. They just, unfortunately, don't happen here.
March 29, 2013
Mmhm, what to say...for starters, I loved the imagination and creativity it took Qamar to create her own new world of Fay. Her descriptions are vivid and paint a pretty picture. I loved the first half of the book mostly. I found myself licking my lips in anticipation.
The second half of the story took a different turn; the story is very enjoyable, I must say. I felt she started rushing the plot at that stage and later didn't allow the plot to progress in due course. The characters were also not as well developed as I cannot summon up the memory of the personality of any single character. I felt a great story fizzled out anti-climatically at the end. I would still recommend it to anyone who loved reading about Fay and magic.
The second half of the story took a different turn; the story is very enjoyable, I must say. I felt she started rushing the plot at that stage and later didn't allow the plot to progress in due course. The characters were also not as well developed as I cannot summon up the memory of the personality of any single character. I felt a great story fizzled out anti-climatically at the end. I would still recommend it to anyone who loved reading about Fay and magic.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews