My Review of Anathema, by Keri Lake

 

Anathema by Keri Lake
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The good part about Anathema is that Lake has done a great job of worldbuilding. The magic system is reasonably unique, the land and civilizations are interesting, and there are unique and interesting monsters and supernatural creatures.

The story is told from the POV of two characters: Zevander, who is an assassin, and Maevyth, who is a waifish and innocent young woman. Zevander is a complex character with an interesting background, powerful in magic, and very dark and brooding, haunted by his past and his curse. Definitely an anti-hero. I enjoyed his part of the story. Zevander's part, and the worldbuilding, are the only reasons I bumped up to 3 stars.

Maevyth, on the other hand, is a very two-dimensional character and very weak. She (and to a slightly lesser degree, her sister) is constantly victimized. In fact, her entire community victimizes her, including her (stereotypical) evil stepmother and her lascivious uncles. So much so that nearly every page of her part of the story involves some sort of in-you-face disrespect or outright torment. Everyone is out to get her, and every man is lustful and rapey. It's so heavy-handed that it is nearly unreadable. It isn't entertaining. And just when you think she's finally escaped her repressive situation by fleeing to the other world through a portal, she is immediately captured, threatened with rape, and thrown in a cell. And then she is rescued... only to be thrown in a cell again. She doesn't drive her story, she just reacts to the constant victimization, pulled along by the winds of torment. Not fun. And then, in the midst of this victimization, somehow we are supposed to buy that she is getting attracted to and aroused by the other protagonist? It's the worst sort of forced romance.

The book then ends on a cliffhanger which is not satisfying in any way. I also didn't like the editing of this book, as there are frequent sentence fragments and modern allusions that bump me out of the story and setting. I don't recommend.

View all my reviews

My Review of "The Maid's Diary" by Loreth Anne White

 

The Maid's Diary by Loreth Anne White
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This story definitely has some twists in it. No spoilers, but it was getting to be near the end when a gigantic twist is revealed. Normally I see things coming, but this twist caught me by surprise. There is someone pulling all the strings, and they did it with panache. Another thing I liked about this book is that all of the characters in it are very three-dimensional, with complex backgrounds and skeletons in their closets. It leads the reader to wonder just who the bad guy is, and maybe the worst aren't actually the murderer.

White tells the tale from five points of view, which actually worked out okay. Stories with too many POVs can sometimes get a bit lost, but she held it together. But one thing that I found less than ideal was that there were two chronological storylines going at once: the "before the murder" storyline, told from the points of view of the three main protagonists involved in the crime, and the "after the murder" storyline, which is told from the POV of one of the detectives. I don't much care for jumping back and forth between chronologies like this, but I can see why the author did it: to put the reader into the mindsets of those involved in the crime, and the the other to piece the crime together afterward. Then it all comes together in the end. But not really my thing. The other thing that I didn't exactly love was how White uses "third person present tense" for everything other than the maid's (Kit's) diary entries. Again, I can see why she did it -- to put the reader in the moment -- but it doesn't lend itself to emotional storytelling, and sometimes the text read more like a police report and less like something I could get emotionally attached to.

Another thing that REALLY bothered me was that the author threw the reader a red herring at the end, which is typical for mystery stories (where there are many), but the one at the end was WAY too convenient to have me believe it. I can't say more without spoiling, but it involved the snooping old lady next door to the murder scene, and it had me rolling my eyes in annoyance. For this reason I wish I could drop from a rating of 4 to a 3.5, but half-stars aren't something I can put here.

View all my reviews