Aaru (Aaru Cycle, #1)

by David Meredith

[Amber (The Literary Phoenix)]

Aaru was sent to me free of charge by the author in exchange for an honest review, so... here goes.

I read 30 pages and I couldn't do it anymore. I just couldn't. The concept sounds really interesting, but I could not get into the writing style and the formatting. There were inconsistencies in the grammar that drove me bonkers. The characters flashed between moods very quickly and I found the descriptions really dense and blocky. A lot of useless dialogue, and a lot of immediate opinions pushed by the characters. My husband went through cancer treatment several years ago (cancer-free now!!!) and a lot of the opinions stated by characters in just the first few pages feel so familiar and so ENRAGING to me... All these things made it impossible for me to focus on the book, which is the reason I don't often pick up self-published books and when I do, I DNF a lot of them.

For all I know, this may be a really incredible story. But I got hung up on the writing style and formatting and I couldn't get into it. A lot of these things are ME problems, and not story problems, so if you aren't very sensitive to these sorts of things, please don't let this review discourage you from picking up the book.