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Hollo
Talking statues, magic threads, and a house full of secrets were enough to keep Hollo occupied these last years. Now the time has come to explore the ordinary world beyond her front door.
On one such venture, things take a turn for the unexpected. Not only are the city streets perilous, and people don’t behave at all how she expected them to, her secret house is losing its light.
But as long as she keeps her magic under control, a hooded cloak should be enough to blend in. It has to be. Because the Hunter and his clockwork men are coming for her, and soon she will have nowhere left to hide.
On one such venture, things take a turn for the unexpected. Not only are the city streets perilous, and people don’t behave at all how she expected them to, her secret house is losing its light.
But as long as she keeps her magic under control, a hooded cloak should be enough to blend in. It has to be. Because the Hunter and his clockwork men are coming for her, and soon she will have nowhere left to hide.
- GenresFantasyMagicYoung Adult
180 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2016
2 people are currently reading
94 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
February 14, 2018
Finished reading: February 10th 2018
"There is never enough time to live, no matter how many years you have in the world."
*** A copy of this book was kindly provided to me by author in exchange for an honest review. Thank you! ***
P.S. Find more of my reviews here.
May 22, 2016
Overall, I think this is a gem of a book that no one seems to know about. One of the best fantasy books I've read in the genre. They must have not marketed this book in the U.S. or something. But I get to be the first review, so cool! Here goes.
Characters:
Easily one of the best aspects of the book is the characters, all of whom are richly imagined and very intuitive to read. The titular character, Hollo, is wonderfully three dimensional. She goes through a lot, and changes, but remains believable. She's 12, and she acts 12, up until she can't act 12 anymore. Thats a familiar trope, but what made Hollo stand out for me was that she didn't grow up too fast. Throughout the book there are reminders that she is (more or less) a child, and despite the crap that happens to her, she finds her way with help, makes mistakes, and adapts, and I never felt that she, or any of the characters were making choices that were untrue to their personalities. I got to say too, this author is probably hands down the best dialogue writer I can remember reading.
One of my favorite lines:
“People don’t like to guess. It’s easier to know something by how it immediately appears. Dark, hard metal is known as it appears, and so dark, hard people are built from it. Marble is smooth and pale and bright like the faces chipped into it. But that’s something about life, what you think you know about a thing is always the first obstacle you face when trying to get to know it better. If they could speak, do you think they’d all be the same?”
World Building:
There wasn't much world building but honestly I didn't mind. I'm not the kind of reader who needs dungeons and dragons style magic rules or vast landscapes. The magic in the book seemed pretty consistent with itself: Some people have magic and using magic eventually drains your life out. More or less. I didn't get bored with it. Got to say I thought the magic was (for magic) pretty original. The author wrote it well. There wasn't any "cheating" like some books do with magic. Every time magic happens, it solves one problem while immediate creating another, which is important, i think. Magic feels cheap when it just lets you win every time. For the rest of the world building...well the setting was imaginative but there wasn't much written about it. The Artisan District isn't deeply explored, and we only get glimpses of any other places in the world. So i don't know whether to give that aspect 1 or 5 stars...not sure how I feel about it. I will say that despite the whole story taking place in a very small part of the city, we are led to believe there's a big world out there at the end of the book. So i'm assuming book 2 is going to have the world building. The imagery that there is, however, I thought was brilliant.
One bit I liked:
The Docks district lay farthest from the
heart of the Empire, at the outskirts of the circulation, and was
the severed artery of Thedes, where the healthy circulation of an
empire had a habit of washing away into the sea.
Prose:
This is an interesting one. The writer is extremely talented, and i think he's young and this is his first book. Even still there some really amazing lines in this book. The artistry is almost out of place in the genre, but fits and feels necessary for the story. There was no unnecessary exposition, even though i thought the first chapter seemed wordy and pointless, it actually was really important. The first couple chapters took me a minute to catch on to. I did have to slow down my reading just a little bit, but it didn't bother me. It was worth it. And it made the book last longer :) I think maybe I'm just used to twilight and divergent and hunger games so I'd forgotten what good writing sounded like :P
Ending: (without spoilers)
Endings bother me most of the time. I like the ending of 'the gate caster's apprentice' alot. The next book (I assume it will be a series) is set up without big cliffhangers, which I appreciate because plenty of books just try and sell you on the next book without any fulfillment or resolution. I really appreciate how well the author handled closing the story while keeping it open enough to excite me about future books. As far as how it ends...well...safe to say that endings usually make me feel unfulfilled, but this one was subtle, organic, and masterfully written.
And the coverart is really on point. I give this book all the stars :) sign me up for anything else this writer writes, he's got a fan for life.
Characters:
Easily one of the best aspects of the book is the characters, all of whom are richly imagined and very intuitive to read. The titular character, Hollo, is wonderfully three dimensional. She goes through a lot, and changes, but remains believable. She's 12, and she acts 12, up until she can't act 12 anymore. Thats a familiar trope, but what made Hollo stand out for me was that she didn't grow up too fast. Throughout the book there are reminders that she is (more or less) a child, and despite the crap that happens to her, she finds her way with help, makes mistakes, and adapts, and I never felt that she, or any of the characters were making choices that were untrue to their personalities. I got to say too, this author is probably hands down the best dialogue writer I can remember reading.
One of my favorite lines:
“People don’t like to guess. It’s easier to know something by how it immediately appears. Dark, hard metal is known as it appears, and so dark, hard people are built from it. Marble is smooth and pale and bright like the faces chipped into it. But that’s something about life, what you think you know about a thing is always the first obstacle you face when trying to get to know it better. If they could speak, do you think they’d all be the same?”
World Building:
There wasn't much world building but honestly I didn't mind. I'm not the kind of reader who needs dungeons and dragons style magic rules or vast landscapes. The magic in the book seemed pretty consistent with itself: Some people have magic and using magic eventually drains your life out. More or less. I didn't get bored with it. Got to say I thought the magic was (for magic) pretty original. The author wrote it well. There wasn't any "cheating" like some books do with magic. Every time magic happens, it solves one problem while immediate creating another, which is important, i think. Magic feels cheap when it just lets you win every time. For the rest of the world building...well the setting was imaginative but there wasn't much written about it. The Artisan District isn't deeply explored, and we only get glimpses of any other places in the world. So i don't know whether to give that aspect 1 or 5 stars...not sure how I feel about it. I will say that despite the whole story taking place in a very small part of the city, we are led to believe there's a big world out there at the end of the book. So i'm assuming book 2 is going to have the world building. The imagery that there is, however, I thought was brilliant.
One bit I liked:
The Docks district lay farthest from the
heart of the Empire, at the outskirts of the circulation, and was
the severed artery of Thedes, where the healthy circulation of an
empire had a habit of washing away into the sea.
Prose:
This is an interesting one. The writer is extremely talented, and i think he's young and this is his first book. Even still there some really amazing lines in this book. The artistry is almost out of place in the genre, but fits and feels necessary for the story. There was no unnecessary exposition, even though i thought the first chapter seemed wordy and pointless, it actually was really important. The first couple chapters took me a minute to catch on to. I did have to slow down my reading just a little bit, but it didn't bother me. It was worth it. And it made the book last longer :) I think maybe I'm just used to twilight and divergent and hunger games so I'd forgotten what good writing sounded like :P
Ending: (without spoilers)
Endings bother me most of the time. I like the ending of 'the gate caster's apprentice' alot. The next book (I assume it will be a series) is set up without big cliffhangers, which I appreciate because plenty of books just try and sell you on the next book without any fulfillment or resolution. I really appreciate how well the author handled closing the story while keeping it open enough to excite me about future books. As far as how it ends...well...safe to say that endings usually make me feel unfulfilled, but this one was subtle, organic, and masterfully written.
And the coverart is really on point. I give this book all the stars :) sign me up for anything else this writer writes, he's got a fan for life.
August 5, 2016
“There was a pool of darkness in the midst of the light, where the wind had come in accompanied by a shadow, a shadow with shoulders and a head that stretched into the lighted space on the floor at the bottom of the stairs.”
Reminiscent of Neil Gaiman, of the darkest episodes of Doctor Who, of some of the madness of Tim Burton, Devon Michael's Hollo: The Gatecaster's Apprentice is an artfully told, dark, and frightening coming-of-age tale with a twist. Hollo, the title character and protagonist, is a puppet made of wood, but one that can think and feel and move autonomously, created by her 'father' Fredric. (This might remind you of Pinocchio, but it shouldn't.)
When Hollo reaches her twelfth birthday, Fredric takes her out into the world, a place far more complex and menacing than her sheltered world of Fredric's house and the metal-casters workshop next door. Here she first hears the name Bander-Clou, and the words 'Zygotic Pneuma'. Just what is she? And who is her father, really?
Clock-work soldiers of metal and wood pursue her. Hollo befriends a human girl; statues come to life; elemental forces protect her. Hollo's world is under siege, and she is caught in a larger story, one older than she but one to which she belongs, and one in which she has an integral part to play. Michaels writes fluidly and effectively, his words invoking horror, happiness, fear and joy, the pacing moving the plot along quickly, but not so quickly the world-building is overlooked. This is a well-realized and developed world, one that the author leads the reader into by hints and clues: the reader learns the world along with Hollo.
Characters are well-developed, especially Hollo, whose innocence at the beginning is lightly but effectively shown, but also the supporting cast, from the malapropistic statue 'The Countess' to the marvellously conceived Lightening Man. And they all have a role to play; none of these characters, some of whom would not be out of place in Alice Through the Looking-Glass, are superfluous to the story.
Hollo: The Gatecaster's Apprentice earns a rare five stars from me. I didn't want to put it down, and yet conversely I rationed myself as to how much I read on any day, so as to savour the book and anticipate where it was going: it was far too good to read in one gulp. One caveat: in the e-book version I read, there were a few production errors, and a few errors that slipped through editing. In several places 'won't' was written as 'wont'; the common error of 'broach' for 'brooch' appeared a few times, along with the newly-frequent (in my experience of 55 years of reading) confusion of 'piqued' with 'peaked'. One's interest is piqued (excited); one's interest in something can 'peak' (reach a height). Both can be correct, but are often, these days, confused. BUT: sometimes, the overall quality of a book or a movie outweighs a few production errors, and this is one of those few cases. Regardless of the (easily-corrected) errors, Hollo deserves five stars.
I received a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.
Reminiscent of Neil Gaiman, of the darkest episodes of Doctor Who, of some of the madness of Tim Burton, Devon Michael's Hollo: The Gatecaster's Apprentice is an artfully told, dark, and frightening coming-of-age tale with a twist. Hollo, the title character and protagonist, is a puppet made of wood, but one that can think and feel and move autonomously, created by her 'father' Fredric. (This might remind you of Pinocchio, but it shouldn't.)
When Hollo reaches her twelfth birthday, Fredric takes her out into the world, a place far more complex and menacing than her sheltered world of Fredric's house and the metal-casters workshop next door. Here she first hears the name Bander-Clou, and the words 'Zygotic Pneuma'. Just what is she? And who is her father, really?
Clock-work soldiers of metal and wood pursue her. Hollo befriends a human girl; statues come to life; elemental forces protect her. Hollo's world is under siege, and she is caught in a larger story, one older than she but one to which she belongs, and one in which she has an integral part to play. Michaels writes fluidly and effectively, his words invoking horror, happiness, fear and joy, the pacing moving the plot along quickly, but not so quickly the world-building is overlooked. This is a well-realized and developed world, one that the author leads the reader into by hints and clues: the reader learns the world along with Hollo.
Characters are well-developed, especially Hollo, whose innocence at the beginning is lightly but effectively shown, but also the supporting cast, from the malapropistic statue 'The Countess' to the marvellously conceived Lightening Man. And they all have a role to play; none of these characters, some of whom would not be out of place in Alice Through the Looking-Glass, are superfluous to the story.
Hollo: The Gatecaster's Apprentice earns a rare five stars from me. I didn't want to put it down, and yet conversely I rationed myself as to how much I read on any day, so as to savour the book and anticipate where it was going: it was far too good to read in one gulp. One caveat: in the e-book version I read, there were a few production errors, and a few errors that slipped through editing. In several places 'won't' was written as 'wont'; the common error of 'broach' for 'brooch' appeared a few times, along with the newly-frequent (in my experience of 55 years of reading) confusion of 'piqued' with 'peaked'. One's interest is piqued (excited); one's interest in something can 'peak' (reach a height). Both can be correct, but are often, these days, confused. BUT: sometimes, the overall quality of a book or a movie outweighs a few production errors, and this is one of those few cases. Regardless of the (easily-corrected) errors, Hollo deserves five stars.
I received a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.
June 15, 2016
I present to you… a present. That’s right, this book by Devon Michael is a gift. That's how good this book is... it's a gift to everyone who enjoys storytelling mastery!
Some of the details in this book were just downright cute. For example when Hollo does her magic with a string and when Ali shows her how to weave them in between their hands making different shapes, because I used to play that game with my friends! Or even the bronze statues that are visually so cold and lifeless, finding the life and that piece of human characteristic inside of them when brought to life with magic. I loved it.
The writing was fabulous! The choice of words and sentence structure was a joy to read and it was all just so imaginative. A bookworm heaven, really.
The characters were cool! From the statues that came to life, clockwork men who do the evil Magicker’s work, The Lightning Man, the Mirror Man, the woman in the wall… The protective house! Of course we have Hollo and Ali. Hollo is wooden so you may think Pinocchio straight away, but don’t. Nothing to do with that story. Ali, a human, becomes Hollo’s friend through some horrible circumstances and the two just fit together so well. Their friendship is lovely and they bounce off each other nicely.
Hollo’s relationship with her father, the magical man who made her, is fantastic. I liked their dialogue.
What really struck me throughout the book and put little smiles on my face were really the small details of regular aspects of life that were written so nicely into the story they were more than just regular aspects. If that makes sense?! Devon simply did a great job at taking the boring and by using his wordsmith skills to write them in a way that suited the storyline and environment.
First half of the book differs from the second half of the book in the sense that there is more action, literally in the form of fighting, towards the end and I’m not sure I entirely enjoyed the whole action bit but it was still good.
My rating: 5***** because the writing was so darned good and the characters were a joy to go on an adventure with!
Ebook currently free on Amazon so go grab your copy, enjoy the book and don't forget to leave a review :)
Some of the details in this book were just downright cute. For example when Hollo does her magic with a string and when Ali shows her how to weave them in between their hands making different shapes, because I used to play that game with my friends! Or even the bronze statues that are visually so cold and lifeless, finding the life and that piece of human characteristic inside of them when brought to life with magic. I loved it.
The writing was fabulous! The choice of words and sentence structure was a joy to read and it was all just so imaginative. A bookworm heaven, really.
The characters were cool! From the statues that came to life, clockwork men who do the evil Magicker’s work, The Lightning Man, the Mirror Man, the woman in the wall… The protective house! Of course we have Hollo and Ali. Hollo is wooden so you may think Pinocchio straight away, but don’t. Nothing to do with that story. Ali, a human, becomes Hollo’s friend through some horrible circumstances and the two just fit together so well. Their friendship is lovely and they bounce off each other nicely.
Hollo’s relationship with her father, the magical man who made her, is fantastic. I liked their dialogue.
What really struck me throughout the book and put little smiles on my face were really the small details of regular aspects of life that were written so nicely into the story they were more than just regular aspects. If that makes sense?! Devon simply did a great job at taking the boring and by using his wordsmith skills to write them in a way that suited the storyline and environment.
First half of the book differs from the second half of the book in the sense that there is more action, literally in the form of fighting, towards the end and I’m not sure I entirely enjoyed the whole action bit but it was still good.
My rating: 5***** because the writing was so darned good and the characters were a joy to go on an adventure with!
Ebook currently free on Amazon so go grab your copy, enjoy the book and don't forget to leave a review :)
June 27, 2016
If you are reading this, you are lucky. You've found this book, and you should read this book. Devon Michael deserves to be read, and you deserve to read him. I loved Hollo and couldn't recommend it highly enough. The story absolutely takes my breath away. It reminds me of the kind of excitement I had when I first read Harry Potter, and the feeling that I had just stumbled into something wonderful, and somehow 'bigger' than other books.
I would never have found this book if I hadn't had the pleasure of meeting the author by chance while he was traveling through my hometown. He is truly one of the nicest and most interesting people I have ever met. I was surprised to find out he writes fantasy, I would've pegged him for a modern day Kerouac or someone like that. He's traveled A LOT! I was delighted when he asked if I wanted to read his new book and post an honest review online. If you like Hollo (you will) his blog is full of really good shorts, too.
I expect I'll get to be an old lady one day who tells people the story about how I met Devon Michael in a cafe on a rainy day and we chatted, way back before he was famous ;)
I would never have found this book if I hadn't had the pleasure of meeting the author by chance while he was traveling through my hometown. He is truly one of the nicest and most interesting people I have ever met. I was surprised to find out he writes fantasy, I would've pegged him for a modern day Kerouac or someone like that. He's traveled A LOT! I was delighted when he asked if I wanted to read his new book and post an honest review online. If you like Hollo (you will) his blog is full of really good shorts, too.
I expect I'll get to be an old lady one day who tells people the story about how I met Devon Michael in a cafe on a rainy day and we chatted, way back before he was famous ;)
August 10, 2016
Book Review: This book was much better than the description set me up to expect. The author's earliest chapters reminded me strongly of Neil Gaiman's The Grave Book, in the evocative writing style, the use of archetypes (Hollo's creation made me think of a magical Pygmalion or female Pinocchio), and the way we got to see Hollo look at our old world with her new, inexperienced eyes.
So here's a closer look, examining the Narration, Content, Characters, Artwork, World-building, and my Overall Reaction.
Narration: Four out of Five. The simple, clear narration didn't always make me feel like I was there, in the story, seeing a real world around me, but I took that to be part of the style of a fanciful, folk-tale type novel. At it's best, it was crisp and story-bookish, telling us what we need to know and leaving the rest to our imagination. There were moments of fresh, imaginative description, where the words were so apt as to leave you delighted, and it had it's moments of rivaling Gaiman's narrative style.
But there were times when it felt redundant or became too much an attempt to bring politics or a magical reality to the story, and then it felt like it was trying to morph from the folk tale/fairy tale into a more standard fantasy. (Even Gaiman can have his moments of this, but in these sorts of stories, the goal is to stick to a simple plot, where we know it can't possibly be but just believe it anyways.)
Content: Three out of Five. This is where the book was at its weakest, I think, because there was a great deal that didn't seem to flow naturally. Given her Pinocchio-like nature, it felt like we should see Hollo being led astray by normal, typical humans who feel she'd be a great addition to their sea-faring crew because she can float or who think they could use her as cheap labor because she doesn't have to eat. Where she encounters those who aren't evil, but are jaded with life, and we see how she affects them.
As it was, it felt like we encountered the villain far too soon, and his evil overshadowed the rest of the plot. Suddenly it was more about revenge (and not from Hollo, but from a friend of hers) than about her exploring our world, about the magic and wonder of a twelve-year-old puppet finding out what it was like to journey out her door.
Characters: Three out of Five. This was actually one of the novel's strengths, but it came across unevenly. Some characters, like Hollo, her dad, and his merchant-friend were fairly well-developed, and I wished I could've spent more time with them. It felt like some scenes from her dad's point of view, as he writes in his book and plans for the future would've helped naturally weave in the villain without changing Hollo's point of view so drastically, preparing us for what was coming.
But in the last half of the book, we spend a great deal of page-time with characters who had very little to do with Hollo, other than the fact that they were fighting the villain of the story. They were strongly drawn to revenge, but we never got to understand them as people, beyond that. I wasn't sure how old they were, what some of them had to be so angry about, and what they looked forward to in life, after revenge (if anything). And if felt like these characters belonged in a different sort of novel than the beginning of the book had set up.
Artwork: Subjective. I really like the colors (particularly the purple tones) that are woven into the color, yet the image seemed a bit confrontational. We are so close to Hollo's face, and she's looking right at us, and while she is pleasant, she also seems bolder from this than she was in the book. And the "Gatecaster's Apprentice" felt misleading to me because she never learns much about magic from her father. She isn't so much his student as his child, and this didn't seem clear from the title or the cover.
World-Building: Four out of Five. This is a mixed bag, as it always is in a fanciful story like this. Most things are supposed to be taken at face value and not investigated or explained too much--felt rather than discussed--and the novel does this, most of the time.
But when it came to magic, it delved too deep (my same gripe with The Grave Book, by the way). It gets involved in trying to explain how magic works, and why, and where Hollo came from (to a degree), going too far for fanciful fantasy and not far enough for the epic sort. And some concepts that were introduced--like the fact that the clockwork men weren't necessarily hateful towards her, but just did their job and left her to make her own choices--were never investigated further. It was never touched on again, even though the clockwork men died left and right. Did they get freed? Were they happy? Did they recognize a spark of life in Hollo that resembled their own? We never know--and we don't need to, provided everything was kept at a superficial, "real because it exists" sort of level.
Overall Response: 14 out of 20, or 3.5 overall. Despite the lack of unity in the structure and style of the story, I did enjoy it. It was imaginative, unique, and fits well in the Young Adult, moving towards Children's Fantasy genre, to be read by anyone who enjoys a story that is not-especially-violent (though there are fights) and not especially romantic, sexual, or explicit (there is no real romance, and aside from "damnit," I don't recall any swearing). Overall, it makes a great break from action-adventure fantasy, and I look forward to reading more from this author.
To read more book reviews like this one, click here.
Copyright 2016 Andrea Lundgren
So here's a closer look, examining the Narration, Content, Characters, Artwork, World-building, and my Overall Reaction.
Narration: Four out of Five. The simple, clear narration didn't always make me feel like I was there, in the story, seeing a real world around me, but I took that to be part of the style of a fanciful, folk-tale type novel. At it's best, it was crisp and story-bookish, telling us what we need to know and leaving the rest to our imagination. There were moments of fresh, imaginative description, where the words were so apt as to leave you delighted, and it had it's moments of rivaling Gaiman's narrative style.
But there were times when it felt redundant or became too much an attempt to bring politics or a magical reality to the story, and then it felt like it was trying to morph from the folk tale/fairy tale into a more standard fantasy. (Even Gaiman can have his moments of this, but in these sorts of stories, the goal is to stick to a simple plot, where we know it can't possibly be but just believe it anyways.)
Content: Three out of Five. This is where the book was at its weakest, I think, because there was a great deal that didn't seem to flow naturally. Given her Pinocchio-like nature, it felt like we should see Hollo being led astray by normal, typical humans who feel she'd be a great addition to their sea-faring crew because she can float or who think they could use her as cheap labor because she doesn't have to eat. Where she encounters those who aren't evil, but are jaded with life, and we see how she affects them.
As it was, it felt like we encountered the villain far too soon, and his evil overshadowed the rest of the plot. Suddenly it was more about revenge (and not from Hollo, but from a friend of hers) than about her exploring our world, about the magic and wonder of a twelve-year-old puppet finding out what it was like to journey out her door.
Characters: Three out of Five. This was actually one of the novel's strengths, but it came across unevenly. Some characters, like Hollo, her dad, and his merchant-friend were fairly well-developed, and I wished I could've spent more time with them. It felt like some scenes from her dad's point of view, as he writes in his book and plans for the future would've helped naturally weave in the villain without changing Hollo's point of view so drastically, preparing us for what was coming.
But in the last half of the book, we spend a great deal of page-time with characters who had very little to do with Hollo, other than the fact that they were fighting the villain of the story. They were strongly drawn to revenge, but we never got to understand them as people, beyond that. I wasn't sure how old they were, what some of them had to be so angry about, and what they looked forward to in life, after revenge (if anything). And if felt like these characters belonged in a different sort of novel than the beginning of the book had set up.
Artwork: Subjective. I really like the colors (particularly the purple tones) that are woven into the color, yet the image seemed a bit confrontational. We are so close to Hollo's face, and she's looking right at us, and while she is pleasant, she also seems bolder from this than she was in the book. And the "Gatecaster's Apprentice" felt misleading to me because she never learns much about magic from her father. She isn't so much his student as his child, and this didn't seem clear from the title or the cover.
World-Building: Four out of Five. This is a mixed bag, as it always is in a fanciful story like this. Most things are supposed to be taken at face value and not investigated or explained too much--felt rather than discussed--and the novel does this, most of the time.
But when it came to magic, it delved too deep (my same gripe with The Grave Book, by the way). It gets involved in trying to explain how magic works, and why, and where Hollo came from (to a degree), going too far for fanciful fantasy and not far enough for the epic sort. And some concepts that were introduced--like the fact that the clockwork men weren't necessarily hateful towards her, but just did their job and left her to make her own choices--were never investigated further. It was never touched on again, even though the clockwork men died left and right. Did they get freed? Were they happy? Did they recognize a spark of life in Hollo that resembled their own? We never know--and we don't need to, provided everything was kept at a superficial, "real because it exists" sort of level.
Overall Response: 14 out of 20, or 3.5 overall. Despite the lack of unity in the structure and style of the story, I did enjoy it. It was imaginative, unique, and fits well in the Young Adult, moving towards Children's Fantasy genre, to be read by anyone who enjoys a story that is not-especially-violent (though there are fights) and not especially romantic, sexual, or explicit (there is no real romance, and aside from "damnit," I don't recall any swearing). Overall, it makes a great break from action-adventure fantasy, and I look forward to reading more from this author.
To read more book reviews like this one, click here.
Copyright 2016 Andrea Lundgren
Want to read
July 24, 2021Yes i added this because the author shares my first and middle name lol
August 7, 2016
A curious tale of a different kind of magic
An adventure, where some people have different types of magic. They were hunted down, even as there own magic killed them.
An adventure, where some people have different types of magic. They were hunted down, even as there own magic killed them.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews