By Yuli Atta
Master of Sorrows by Justin Call
This started out well enough and it was actually interesting to me for a long time. However, as I didn't see the plot progressing for 300 pages I gradually lost interest. I got to a point where I skipped 40 pages and I didn't miss a thing.
The first 240 pages are awfully repetitive and could've been cut in half. It's exactly the kind of thing I personally don't like reading about and I feel like I played myself dirty by trying a book that was so obviously not my cup of tea. However, I was willing to overlook the school setting, coming of age story and the training arc for the sake of the fact that the MC is supposed to be the villain or anti-hero but he's not yet and I couldn't care less, to be honest.
I'm kind of sad but I don't want to waste my time with a book I'm no longer into, so I'd rather stop reading and get to something else. I now feel like I could've read something much more interesting instead of this one when I managed to get through 200 pages in a day.
The Ruin of Kings by Jenn Lyons
But I'm giving up at 74 pages because I've been sighing deeply because of how cringe some stuff became.
First of all, it gives me vibes of two of my least favourite books on Earth, Nevernight (useless footnotes) and The Name of the Wind (a personal story about somebody I don't care about).
Now, when I first started reading, I thought this was pretty cool. I mean, I hate multiple POVs in first and third person at once but I thought it was an interesting concept. Maybe one of the characters was telling the story from a biased point of view (the MC) and the other character was telling the story in a slightly different way and time frame to throw him off (Talon) and I was kind of excited to see how both would clash and if there would be something different. I'd still be on board for that.
Now, I'd prefer if both POVs were written in the 3rd person, in fact, I'd prefer it if the storyline was actually linear because let me tell you how it's written.
We have the MC and Talon, who is his jailor. Talon told him to tell her a story, his story. Does this ring a bell? (Kvothe)
So he starts telling her his story in the first person. And then she interrupts and starts telling His (The MC's) story in the third person but she tells a different story, she starts 6 months before the ones he's telling.
I don't know which one is more interesting tbh.
And oh, the info dumps.
Oh, my god. Why?
See, I wouldn't usually have a problem if the info dumps were done in an interesting way or if they were important but especially, in the beginning, we're showered with so much information, omg.
And more info in the footnotes. Like, why?
And then, there was this instance where they mention Gatekeepers and instead of the annotator explaining what they are, he talks about something completely irrelevant about them which leads me to believe that whoever is supposed to read this already knows who they are, but if they do, why did we need all of the other info? Not to mention that if these guys (Talon and MC) live in that world, why would they explain to each other what is what? Wouldn't it make more sense for the annotator to add in details to make it make more sense rather than them explaining stuff like that?
Like, imagine me telling a story and explaining what a car looks like. I get it's for the sake of the reader but that's the trick with a person telling a story to another person from the same world.
Oh, the names.
There are so many of them and they are so hard to say. They disrupt the flow of the writing which is the only good thing about this book even if it's redundant at times and uses some modern language that I think doesn't suit the book like catcalling but nvm.
So yeah:
Book - info-dumpy
Footnotes - info-dumpy
POVs and writing don't flow well for me.
I was lowkey interested in the story until I realised there's a prophecy and the MC is some kind of royalty and people have an agenda about it. I didn't remember the synopsis TBH and I don't usually mind this kind of plots but what I read was either too info-dumpy with too many names to keep track of, or too predictable of the kind when you just can't help but roll your eyes.
Now granted, I only managed to read 74 pages, stuff may have changed further on in the book and I may change my mind at some point and give it a second chance but I highly doubt it.
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