Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Clearly I'm in the minority when it comes to my opinion of this book, but it matters not. This book, though starting out interesting, eventually lost its luster and bored the ever living crap out of me. It was an absolute CHORE to get through it; I literally felt exhausted just getting through page after page of nonsensical situations that dragged on and on, that I lost track of what was supposed to be important in the scene. And the main guy Darrow, I mean WHAT? This is the guy compared to Katniss and Ender? This boring dud of a character with zero personality? NICE TRY. I'm not going to bother sharing the plot, as it's been done to death already. But I know once the plot changed from life on Mars to some Academy situation and people warring and taking over castles and stuff, it went downhill for me because I didn't care. Because it didn't feel like an otherworldly Mars story to me anymore. Just another war story with one victor who everyone inexplicably worships. Biggest problem for me, though, that I couldn't shake? WRITING STYLE. Writing style can very much make or break a story for me, and in this one's case, it not only broke the story, it shattered it to pieces and then ground it up into a fine powder to disperse to the winds. This was so incredibly convoluted. It's bad, bad, bad. First off, this story is written from the perspective of Darrow. You know, first person. But what the author seems to forget is that when you tell a story as a single character, then that single character is not supposed to know little details or facts of other moments in the story, unless told by other characters. Otherwise it's simply an omnipresent narrator who knows everything about all characters and all scenarios. This frustrated me to no end because it stripped Darrow from having any sort of personality of his own because he's too busy telling the story like a person who's from the outside looking in. For example, this kind of stuff: "We hid in the shadows as two girls pass with cups of milk. They have no torches or fires an enemy can spot from the distance, only small candles. It makes it easy to slink about. Apparently the girls are pretty, because Cassius makes a face and pretends to follow them up the stairs." ---> Oh? How would Darrow know what's in the cups? And why would the girls "apparently" be pretty? Am I to believe he knows exactly what's in the cups but not at all what they look like? "His hair is golden curls but matted with grit and grease. Fleas make their home there." --> Really? And how would Darrow know that? Is he right up on the guy's head? But the absolute WORST is just the general flow of writing. It's all matter-of-fact. Droll. Very blah blah blah. BORING. It's like communicating in THIS format: I got up in the morning. I brushed my teeth. My toothbrush is blue. And it's old. I went to the store. I intended to buy a new one. I forgot my purse at home. Which means I drove without a license. The cashier was understanding. It was a pretty bad day. Here's some actual examples from the story: "Fear trickles down my spine as something howls. It is not a wolf. It cant be what I think it is. Blue light flashes as a stunpike flails in the air. The boy screams another curse. A knife got him. Someone runs to his aid and electricity flares blue again. I see a black wolf standing over one body as another falls. Darkness again." "My horse alone is not covered with mud. She is a bight mare. And I am a bright sight. I carry...golden standard in my left hand. We could have hidden it. Could have kept it safe." "Dead silence as we ride through our lowlands. Fog seeps around the trees. I cut through it." Blah, blah, BLAH. The most interesting tidbits of the story were not even expanded, like people with wings? I would have LOVED to have more details on that. Even the very book cover suggests that perhaps wings are something of the norm. But nope. And then the combining of words and capitalizing only one letter in the middle, or the strange words in general: gravBoots highLingo highDraft drillBoy gorydamn gorywell Bugger my goryballs! I can see what he was trying to do, I totally get it, but for me it just made the writing even more of a chore, probably because I'm too much a grammar freak. I don't like jarring writing/words, shoving words together or using random upper case where you want. It interrupts the flow far too much. All in all, I just hated this book the further it went on. And I thought it seemed so very good. I almost gave it two stars, but remembered how as I was reading it, I was actually getting angry that it wasn't over yet. But it just didn't strike my fancy. As I said, the main character Darrow was a drag, and very very unlikable. I never once liked Darrow. Not once. He was an irritating, pompous, self-involved jerk to me. I couldn't connect with him, nor any of the other characters. Overly complicated names, forgettable characters, all mixed with the convoluted writing. Just one big mess. Book two? No thanks.