Welcome to one of those stories where my reading it told me nothing about the plot. So here’s the blurb.
Can you tell me what’s wrong with this?
How about if I show you the whole page.
Do you see the problem now? First there’s the frankly insane price for an e-book.
Second, the book is apparently part of a series and is, in fact, the third part of the series. But nothing on the page indicates this and certainly nothing on NetGalley (where I read this) indicated it as well.
It’s not hard to get Amazon or other sites to link your series. It really isn’t. All it takes is an email. Seriously. Rose and I have done it. And if we can do it, other authors can bloody well do it. And if you don’t know how… GOOGLE IT!!!
So on to the review.
It’s hard for me to describe Grace of a Hawk because for much of the book I was confused. Confused as to who the POV character was. Confused as to what was happening. Confused as to what the plot was. Confused about who was the protagonist. Confused about why I should care about these characters. Just overall confused.
The thing is, even if I had read the previous parts I would have still been confused.
Why?
The book was told in first person and jumped between characters without warning. And I do mean without warning. As in sometimes without the benefit of even a scene break. Yeah…
The accepted convention is to put a break in. And for first person to change chapters and name who the POV character is. This is so the reader, who has gotten used to a certain POV and thought process, doesn’t get jarred out of the story or confused.
A confused reader is a frustrated reader. And frustrated readers don’t buy more books from you.
Even worse, the book was guilty of one of my most hated literary fumbles. Infodump. I hate infodump.
It’s a sign of lazy writing.
Find other ways to get information across. And the author did one of my least favorite versions ever… the dreaded “As you know…”
I get that since this is part of a series that the author needed to catch people up. But it didn’t work. I wasn’t caught up. I was confused. And bored. So very very bored.
The only reason this doesn’t get a one star is because when we did get dialogue it was fun. But that wasn’t enough to make me like this thing. It also wasn’t enough to make me want to buy more from this author.
Two Stars
I received a copy of this book through NetGalley
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