A Wild and Unremarkable Thing

by Jen Castleberry

[sa090]

I feel kind of cheated by what the synopsis promised me and what the book actually delivered for me.

───────────────────

I’m not a very big fan of the descriptive type of writing, or in better words where the author will be describing what’s happening more often than allowing the characters to talk it out. It results in a boring narrative most of the time for me, this one in particular though was somewhat better than the books I tried to read before with this type of writing but I wish it didn’t follow it at all tbh. Luckily it’s more of a mix of writing styles than just one constant style of writing, so to me it’s a much easier read than the late Ursula La Guin’s “A Wizard From Earthsea.” there is also a certain poetic way to how this book was written, not full on poetry thankfully but still similar in that regard.

To me, the synopsis implied that I will be seeing this fight between dragons and humans with magic and mythology mixed in where I’ll be sitting here screaming my head off in excitement but in reality, I think I got something completely different. There is a lot of world building in this novella, not nearly enough but it easily takes the biggest part of the already very short book. This in turn gives a very rough outline to the characters in the book, most of them don’t get all that much focus on and can be summed up in one or two sentences.

One of the things I wished here is less focus on one character so others can get to shine, but alas nothing of the sort happened. Because of the setting, it’s pretty easy to see certain rules in their world concerning the gender roles but it feel like Jen Castleberry didn’t really use that to her full advantage. Because I loved Eon’s duology last year, I had a bit of a high hope that the journey Cody will be taking will be another beautiful journey to follow, but that didn’t happen. There are many spoiler filled reasons why it’s the case but it’s a shame, I would’ve loved to see more.

The novella spends the majority of its limited pages hyping up and giving importance to the epic fight against the Fire Scales but if anything, the ending is anticlimactic and a huge letdown. I had a growing concern as the remaining pages dwindled down and we still haven’t gotten to half of this journey before the huge final rush begins and I’m flipping to the last page. Even the mythology is extremely lacking, I tried looking up these legends but I really couldn’t find anything so I’m not sure if it’s “inspired” by mythology or I just couldn’t find it anywhere online.

So what did I actually enjoy in this novella? I enjoyed the world, even though we barely got to anything deep in it and I really enjoyed one of the scenes involving Cody in the later parts of the novella. It’s a huge letdown when I anticipate something a lot and it ends up feeling like wasted potential, a couple of more hundred pages and less focus on irrelevant characters + their “defining quirks” would’ve probably been a much better approach for this... 🙂

Final rating: 2/5