It Passed the Time

There is only one way to start this post and it is to quote Ramona Quimby Age 8:  “I can’t believe I read the whole thing!”

So… was it bad?  No.  Was it raunchy?  No.  Was it “meh”?  Not really, it was actually fairly interesting, but I still just never really loved it.  And honestly, I don’t think it even had anything to do with the writing, per se (it was written well enough).  It was mostly that it was so far into fantasy that I kind of (for the first time) understood my dad’s assessment of the genre in general—every time the main characters face something difficult all the rules change.  See what I like most about stories like Harry Potter or Twilight is that there are definitely fantastic things, but each one comes with a set of rules and a good author knows how to put the rules into play and then follow them.  There are limits to magic and fantastical creatures.  This story didn’t really have that.  

Now, in all honesty, if I were to finish the series (which I have no intention of doing) perhaps now that she has met all these crazy characters they would then follow their rules from here out.  However, just going by the first book, Kara never stays in one place long enough to know all the rules, and every time she meets a new type of creature (how many of them there are I couldn’t even guess) they have their own set of “mystical powers” so I’m guessing the rules would just keep changing.

As far as a fantasy goes though, I guess it was ok.  For the most part, it kept me engaged.  I just knew from about 50% in that it was going to end in the worst possible way.  For me that is, not a cliffhanger but rather with the cheesy “tide of war is coming and we’ll face it when we must…” type line.  There is only one book that can get away with that ending in my mind and it’s Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.  One of the reasons it doesn’t bother me too much there is that a) it’s book 4 in the series… she’s already got you hooked, and b) Rowling is a master at wordplay so she says essentially the same thing and still manages not to get cheesy.  There have been other books that I have put up with an ending like this (the first one that comes to mind is The Saints, by Lynnie Purcell… once again NOT the first book in the series) but they all got on my nerves to some degree.

Overall, this wasn’t a horrible way to pass the time.  If you like fantasy as much or more than paranormal I’d say “Go for it.”  If you prefer a more reality grounded (or even just something just based on EARTH) there are many more I would recommend before this one!