The Black Tides of Heaven (Tensorate, #1)

by Jy Yang

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I was always attracted to this series and I’m thankful that it was a favourite of a friend for me to read in the NEWTs of 2019.

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Seirei no Moribito remains one of my absolute favourite anime series and I always hate the fact that Scholastic only translated the first two books without the rest, and with seemingly no plans to continue them. So when I began reading this book, I got a similar vibe to the oriental vibe I saw in Seirei no Moribito and that in itself made me super excited. Even better yet when Jy Yang implemented some mythical characters and I’m sitting there thinking I’m going on one amazing ride throughout the entirety of this!!! Did that happen? Well, not exactly.

For one, the book is incredibly short and it’s a standalone as well, so the world building is scarce. We have a magic system in place for instance and we hear different applications of it, see the characters use it in different ways and we also get to hear it mentioned multiple times without going in depth. The not going in depth part killed me given the frequency of the mentions, I mean, if you won’t go in details then don’t add it in or better yet, make it a generic one where you don’t have to go into details because almost everyone already knows about it. I’m a reader who cares about these details, I don’t give a damn about who ends up with who as long as it doesn’t ruin my enjoyment, but a lack of details is harsh.

Secondly, the plot line of the book is very basic, it’s done multiple times so there is no need for further clarification, which opened the door for me to focus more on the characters. Although they are explored better, I’ll say that they too are lacking in some regard. Everything is almost skimmed over, I can find some things here and there that are a characteristic of one of the characters, but I won’t really know how they got there. For a spoiler free example, let’s mentioned Akeha, before he was confirmed he had a certain ideology to him, yet after the confirmation he changed drastically without a big reason to show why.

If it comes down to choosing why I’m somewhat salty about this book, then it’ll probably be the romance or rather the thirstiness of the characters to anyone who looks at them twice and the diversity. Characters in this book are genderless or more accurately, gender neutral and they “choose” which they want to be. That’s wonderful for those who care about this to the shallow extent that they refuse to read books without diversity, but to me personally it felt like it (alongside the romance) became more important elements in the book than what I enjoy in my series.

The protector is easily the most interesting character in the series and I’m thankful that the books are standalone because I’m hoping that the others will be more fun or rather my style. So far, I’m disappointed at the missed opportunities.

Final rating: 2.5/5