Amber (The Literary Phoenix)
Written on Nov 28, 2017
I had 42 comments on this as I read it because I could not stop pointing out all its failings. The writing looked like an editor hadn't even touched it with a 20-foot pole. The character were flat as pancakes, the world-building was mostly a scientific, condescending talk-down... just... no?
Lets get technical here.
The writing.
The writing style fluctuates between fragments and run-on sentences. The author delights in phrases like "But there’s stuff we don’t have an explanation for that will be science someday." and "It was a perfectly reasonable question, to which I had no answer." to get away with not explaining his own universal concepts.
There were places where there were both periods and commas. Sometimes the two were interchanged. This book definitely suffers from a lack of proper editing... to the point where I actually looked into the publisher and discovered this wasn't self-published, it was small-published... and there was an editor because she is thanked in the acknowledgments. If she improved this book, I'd hate to see what it looked like before.
The world building.
Less went into building the individual world and more into explaining what a multiverse is. By 31% the concept of a multiverse had been explained 5 times, and after that I stopped counting. The multiverse was the only part of this book I was really interesting in! ... Or would have been... I watch Rick & Morty y'all - I know what a multiverse is. AND SOMEHOW this manages to get explained to me in a more condescending way than by Rick Sanchez? Someone give this guy a medal.
The only world with a bit of interest is Jemma's beehive world, which seemed like a rip-off apocalyptic future with a German takeover (the "Vaterland" as opposed to "Vaderland"). I thought maybe we were going to get better at that point.
NOPE.
The characters.
Oh boy.
So we've got a character named Hartun who is clearly of middle eastern decent (exactitudes elude me) and who is the biggest bully. We're got Moses from the 'hood who drops letters in his word so'times just cuz that's his way. We've got lovely Jemma who is in the story simply for Jacobus to fawn over, and Jacobus himself, whose worst, weirdest reality was when he was a redhead.
We also get to look forward to lovely phrases like "A reggae guy. Like Bob Marley. With dreadlocks and a beeg spleef, mon." (spoken by Moses) and "He smiled, but his jaw trembled, and I knew that if Mose had been born with different pigmentation, he’d have been white as a ghost." (describing Moses). DEAR LORD MAKE IT STOP. There's literally nothing to be gained by this type of racial fingerprinting and it's just plain offensive? Like... ignorantly offensive. Something your well-meaning but SUPER racist grandfather would say with a good heart and a foul mouth. STILL INEXCUSABLE.
Editor, WHERE WERE YOU.
For the cherry on the top, we've got Hartun in the last couple pages calling Jacobus a 'faggot'.
NOT OKAY.
I cannot in any way endorse this book.
It's just plain embarrassing that so many red flags didn't get taken care of in revisions. The multiverse concept isn't very interestingly done (they run through each world, barely acknowledging it, trying to get home). I wanted to stop reading this so many times because it was actually painful, but I felt obliged to finish it since I received it free in exchange for an honest review from NetGalley. You wanted honest? Here's honest.
This book needs to go back to the drawing board. It needs several more revisions to remove offensive choices and build action and interest. I'm happy for all those on Goodreads who've been really pleased with this book, but as someone who reads a lot and it actually quite interested in the science used here (that's why I requested it to begin with) I am shocked at how raw and unfinished this book felt.
Plus the derogatory comments. COMPLETELY unnecessary.
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