My Thoughts:
Love to see Forrest again!! It's like meeting a long lost friend! Character development? Can never go lower than 4! Having said that, I was not impressed with Pepper trying to face up to the bad guys and then let them beat her again just so that her tiger can save her again. I'm sorry, but, that is lame... However, the story telling quality is so wonderful that this book whizzed by.

On the first round of reading before the audiobook was released, I tried to read the ebook as slowly as possible and savour it as long as I could. But it still went too fast for me!

I am an old fan of this author and this series and can't wait for Cursed Dragon!

Quantitative Evaluation:
Story telling quality = 5
Character development = 4.5
Story itself = 5
Writing Style = 5
Ending = 4.5
World building = 5
Cover art = 4.5
Pace = 5
Plot = 4

Overall Rating: 5 out of 5… (meer)

Gemarkeerd

cherrymischievous | Mar 2, 2024 |

Rebel Unicorn (Rebel of the Otherworld, #1) door Brogan Thomas

I am honestly stunned by how good this book is. Usually, with books like these, there is something fishy going on. Released almost half a year ago, with an average rating of almost 4.5 but only 445 ratings, and not a single bad review, this very much reeks like some low-effort crap trap for a quick buck.
Books rarely stay undiscovered like this for this long if there isn't a very good reason for it.
But this one might actually be an exception for once.
Don't get me wrong, this book is far from perfect and its current average rating is definitively overblown, but this is easily better than 95% of urban fantasy that was released in the last few years.
Sadly this isn't saying much though but credit where credit is due.
I am a bit surprised by the primary category being Urban Fantasy here. This book very much gave me science-fantasy (sci-fi with magic) vibes. It reminds me of B.R. Kingsolvers Magitek. But I guess that also counts as Urban Fantasy for some strange reason.

Be warned, this is more of a feedback review I guess.

Let me first briefly talk about the audiobook narration which for sure has negatively affected my experience with this book. Here and there the narrator shows that she is able to hit fitting inflections and facilitate the content of the book. But she frequently falls into this rhythmic and detached narration voice which dulls any emotion the underlying text is trying to convey. It's not monotone per-say but it has the same effect. It sounds like one would read the closing line of a fairytale "and then they lived happily ever after" but constantly. There are better words for this but I can't think of any.

But now let's get to the actual book. Initially, the book has some problems with tone inconsistency.
The story starts with a bang, the MC discovers a gruesome scene and then quickly finds herself outnumbered and fighting for her life. The book tries to describe these murders in visceral and horrifying language and shows us how it emotionally impacts the MC and her crew, but at the same time, they trade witty one-liners while they slice and rip apart their enemies with body parts, innards, and fluids covering everything. And they joke about the ick-factor which is in stark contradiction with the supposed horror they experienced prior. They unintentionally appear like psychos which actually becomes relevant later on in the story but I don't think the author intended this connection at all.
This makes it very hard to empathize with her horror over the discovered crime itself and completely undermines the impact the previous scene was supposed to have.
This kind of thing is a problem throughout but it is much less pronounced later on.
You have to decide on a tone! You can not just switch between joking casualness and being deeply horrified willy-nilly.
You can not eat the cake and have it too.

Now to a different point.
I would have loved for a longer-lasting real lingering aftermath of her stint in white torture prison. Initially, it seemed like this was the intention but it ultimately went away far too quickly. The impact of the experience was described far too well and in too much detail for it to just go away like that.

I wouldn't have minded for this book to be 200 pages longer at all. Especially the part where they track down the culprit and and are being led around by their noses was a very good setup but the author didn't invest the time to actually make it interesting. The ultimate resolution was so quick that it almost felt like exposition. Yes, she went to various people and talked and fought a bit but it all just felt too effortless. Things just happened too quickly without me getting any background on anything. There was more than enough just in the last third of this book to fill 4 separate books in the series but it was all glossed over so quickly. The book is aiming for fast-paced. But if your book becomes a summary of itself it's no longer fast-paced. It actually becomes less engaging and it makes it harder to stay invested.

This leads me to my biggest gripe, the angel. He is just so unbelievably stupid. And I don't mean this as a description of the character. I mean he is actually too stupid to be believable as a character. And most of the story hinges on this stupidity. I think it might have worked better if there were more excuses for his behavior. We never actually see the evidence he is presented with. We never find out how they actually fooled his lie-detection ability. I would have loved to see more background and detail to basically everything. So many exciting parts of the story stayed entirely unexplored. And this also leaves me with this bitter after-taste that it is entirely possible that this is because none of it is in any way planned or designed to be consistent. It very well might be that all the tidbits that make up the last third of the book were made up on the spot without consideration of how any of it would impact the world around it. Is the MC rich or poor? How much do you earn as a guild assassin? Expensive spells and potions are mentioned repeatedly but they use it all willy-nilly. Is this like a one-week paycheck kind of expensive or one decade? How do they compare? What about the drone cameras and the tech witch? What are the limitations of all of this?
Maybe the author is maintaining an internal wiki brandon-sanderson style to keep track of all the world-building. But I really can't tell.

Now to a bit more nitpicky detail.
The MCs name is Tru. Maybe this is a me-thing but while listening to this as an audiobook it constantly lead to me having to parse sentences twice because I first heard "true" until the context revealed this was actually her name. This is particularly annoying because the angel sometimes says "Truth" to confirm truthfulness. But sometimes he just says "Tru" to get her attention and I can understand that the narrator was unable to consistently pronounce them distinctively enough to keep them apart reliably.

While I am already in the business of dispensing unsolicited advice, I think part of the reason why this book struggles to find its audience is the cover and the title. It so very much sounds like some low-effort dystopian YA garbage and I found myself checking more than once if YA had been tagged, and if it were I would have avoided this book altogether and this isn't helped by the blurb either.
Don't get me wrong, I am actually on board with the whole unicorn rainbow color thing as it happens in the story itself, but I think it is almost impossible to present rainbow hair on a cover in a way that doesn't seem cheesy and juvenile. Especially not with this title font on top of it. I don't dislike the cover from an art perspective. It looks cool. But it doesn't look like it would be on the cover of a book I might enjoy.
This goes back to the inconsistency in tone. There are parts of the book that actually very much sound like a YA superhero trash story and she is overpowered enough for this to fit as well. Braindead-witty one-liners, everyone is a killer badass sexy millionaire assassin that is super famous and also super secret and mysterious everyone knows and also nobody knows, and so on. You see what I'm saying?
But then the book demonstrates that there is at least a chance for much more depth behind this shallow first impression.… (meer)

Gemarkeerd

omission | Oct 19, 2023 |

Cursed Wolf: Urban Fantasy Shifter Stand-Alone… door Brogan Thomas

My Thoughts:

This is my first Brogan Thomas book and I am so very glad that I stumbled into her! I like her author's voice! The sassy sarcasm and the way she weaves a wonderful world and her characters are loveable! Though the plot has tiny little holes in them and kinda predictable. However, I can forgive that because this is urban fantasy after all, not crime fiction.

This is also my first Poppy Royana listen and I like the way she reads! Her British accent and young voice fits Forrest to the T! I like the way she reads her lines with sarcasm and vive!

Empirical Evaluation:
Story telling quality = 5
Character development = 4.5
Story itself = 4.5
Writing Style = 5
Ending = 4
World building = 5
Cover art = 4.5
Pace = 4.5
Plot = 4
Narration = 5

Overall Rating: 5 out of 5… (meer)

Gemarkeerd

cherrymischievous | 1 andere bespreking | Oct 14, 2023 |

Cursed Wolf (Creatures of the Otherworld #1) door Brogan Thomas

Update:

I just finished listening to the newly released audiobook, and it was incredible. The narrator did a fantastic job of bringing Forrest and her story to life, spot-on with her attitude and internal monologues. I thoroughly enjoyed listening and would absolutely recommend to anyone who prefers to listen to their stories come to life.

Original review:

I had zero clue that this was a debut novel for the author, until I went to look up the rest of her catalog once I'd finished reading this book. That right there should tell you something.

The story was an incredibly emotional ride. We started by meeting Forrest, an incredibly rare female shifter who had been trapped in her wolf form for many years, though neither she, nor we as readers, were aware of exactly how long. Unfortunately for her, freeing herself and managing to shift back into human only created new - and unbelievably more dangerous - problems. She was made to be a victim at the hands of those who should've protected her, and as a result, she showed her naivety each time the slightest offer of aid was sent her way.

"Emotionally I feel like an autumn leaf; dead but still clinging desperately to the branch and dreading the next gust of wind."

I can honestly say that I don't think I've ever mentally railed at a book as much as I did while reading this one. There were people that Forrest extended trust to who so obviously didn't deserve it. There were times that she could've made a move simply by speaking up, but didn't - couldn't. Still, watching as Forrest was able to slowly learn how to set aside her misplaced shame and rise above her past was truly an empowering journey. Female power, hear me roar, all that jazz.

There was a lot to this book. We jumped through time a fair bit, told that many circumstances occurred rather than actually having been present for it. We were told about so many different supernatural creatures (her take on witches and those nifty potion balls would be interesting to see in another book), but barely expanded on any of them. Even so, this wasn't by any means a short story, and was a very satisfying read that tied up almost everything that it set in motion. (I say "almost" as I'm a little salty that a certain character didn't get some well-deserved attitude adjustment at their own negligence... Maybe we can hope for a bonus scene down the road? Haha.)

It's rare to find an entertaining paranormal read that doesn't require a huge commitment to multiple books, so I was pleasantly surprised to enjoy Cursed Wolf as much as I did. Curious to see what else comes from this new writer.

I received a free advanced copy of this book from BookSirens in exchange for a fair and honest review.… (meer)

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Sam.Everard | 1 andere bespreking | Jan 3, 2021 |

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