When I read books, I try to read from the perspective of a reader and not from an English teacher’s perspective, or even an editor’s perspective. Sometimes I fail. Sleepers was one of those books that I couldn’t stop my inner editor from coming out. There were a lot of simple and compound sentence constructions, and I felt this often made the narration stilted. The bulk of the story takes place through dialogue between characters or through Lianne’s thoughts. For being such a great fighter, Lianne only fought twice that I can recall.
There were also a number of inconsistencies that bothered me. Lianne originally states that she could not raise Trevin because she didn’t love him like a son, and then later says she does without an explanation for such a change. She states that she loves Kellan unconditionally, and then easily throws it away for Bryden a few chapters later. I’m not a fan of love triangles to begin with, and these actions annoyed me because they seemed so unnecessary. I struggled to understand the character’s motivations and make a connection with them. I occasionally had trouble with the way characters said things. Example:
“He’s been disinherited,” I said. ”He’s not the king’s son. The queen had an affair and he is the product of their love.”
I had a difficult time believing a 16 year old would say that, especially the “product of their love” part. I also read the synopsis (above) at 43% and found that I knew very little beyond what is stated in the synopsis, which was frustrating for me. Either the synopsis gives away too much, or the plot did not move along very quickly. The second half of the book was definitely better than the first, and the secrets behind Lianne’s heritage and people were intriguing enough to make me want to know more, though I am not sure at this point whether I will pick up the next book in the series.
There is far more at work in this world than Lianne or we, as readers, can ever guess. I wish this would have been explored in greater depth in the book, as the ending sort of slammed into us with many things happening all at once with little time to process it all. There were some twists and turns at the end in regards to certain characters, but they were so unexpected that it was almost unbelievable. Well, I suspected something was up with a specific character, but what actually happened turned out to be much bigger than I suspected and rather than being thrilled or excited, I was a little flummoxed.
You Might Enjoy This Book If…
Judging by the reviews on Goodreads and Amazon, I seem to be in the minority about Sleepers, so you may enjoy enjoy this one, even if I didn’t.