Carlee > Recent Status Updates

I think the investigative storytelling style is what's keeping me interested here. The twists are good and revealing a little at a time. One of the 'plot holes' from earlier in the book was explained. I still think it could do with some heavy editing and work on the characterization. However, I do think it's mainly a starting of the story/book problem because it does get better.

Some things are still unclear. But the plot is the only thing keeping me reading. The only two characters I'm interested in are Shal and Visitor.

I'm very confused by characters' decisions. There's a lot that is conflicting or feels off. Characters feel younger than they are. YA feeling writing. But I'm interested enough in the plot that I'm not DNFing yet...

So far, the worldbuilding isn't great, but I want to give the plot some more time to get my interest.

After a few chapters, I find the worldbuilding a bit all over the place. Too much is being dumped with too much description. The brother's decision came out of nowhere and was pretty extreme, but up until then they seemed perfectly fine? It doesn't really fit the characterization we got to that point. And the location of the palace just feels like Numenor (The Rings of Power)...

The poem in the beginning is too similar to a combination of LOTR/Hobbit film quotes: Galadriel's opening in LOTR, "blood and fire" reminds me of Smaug/Lake-town prophecy, and the final page in the Book of Mazarbul in Moria ("We cannot get out. We cannot get out. They have taken the Bridge... They are coming."). I'm not saying it was purposefully done, but it's still just too similar for comfort.

Well, before I even got to the first chapter, I was already kind of turned off. The map at the beginning is very...very similar to the map of Middle Earth just tilted to the left and changed just a little. Some things are also named very similarly with only slight changes (Great East Road is called Great Eastern Road for example). It's just too similar for my comfort.