Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The author completely failed to create believable characters. Some character "traits" were mentioned in one random sentence, then never mentioned again in the entire book, making it very difficult to understand the character or get a full picture of their inner workings. Their motivations were poorly described, if described at all, and this made it very difficult to relate to the characters, let alone sympathize with them! The characters felt very whiny, weak, and trite. If the author had spent more time at the beginning of the book painting a more elaborate and descriptive picture of what their rich lives were like and then had written more thorough and horrifying descriptions of what the tenements were like, then maybe the characters would not have felt that way. As it is, their life in the tenements doesn't sound that bad, especially since the characters managed to bring so many of their fancy, rich items along with them, like the wooden radio. The author didn't follow the elementary writing rule of "Show, don't tell!" Showing the audience instead of simply telling them that it's so makes the descriptions feel credible and authoritative. The author's descriptions felt neither credible nor authoritative; they felt much more bland, contrived, haphazard, and arbitrary. The descriptions were almost never elaborated upon or reinforced in subsequent scenes. In fact, there were several descriptions that felt almost contradictory to previous ones! This completely prevented the story from feeling put-together and polished. There were also a lot of anachronisms, especially in the vocabulary used by the characters, but also in the ideas and a few times in the items used by the characters. This was a major obstacle in making the story feel authentic. It felt like the book was a first draft written by the seat of the author's pants and was never refined or pruned. The sequence of events felt forced and random; events rarely (if ever) impacted other events or flowed purposefully from one to another. Since the characters and their motivations were so sparingly described, I very often found myself mentally yelling at the characters, "Why, why, WHY are you doing something so pointless, random, and stupid YET AGAIN?!" I was constantly distracted by the weak characters and the lame descriptions, which is a terrible shame because I know there is a wonderful story in there just waiting to be written. Unfortunately, this is definitely not it. I had to force myself to keep reading in hopes that it would get better, but it didn't. I would not recommend this book.