Song of Blood & Stone by L. Penelope
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
How many reviews have I started with “I really wanted to like this story, but…” over the last few years? And here I am again, adding another one to the category. To make matters worse, I started out by liking this book. I tried signing up for the upcoming blog tour, but missed the deadline by mere hours. Nevertheless, I emailed the PR person ensuring them I would post a review on various sites. I was so enthusiastic and optimistic about this story. I will try not to get too caught up in my review, but please bear with me.
The characters were inconsistent at best. The protagonist, a young woman, started out as a strong female lead, with a good head on her shoulders until a pair of pants comes along and turns her into an emotional mess. Every other character only seemed to serve the purpose of throwing tangents and red herrings into the story. Flat, predictable and two dimensional, they lacked any depth that would encourage the reader to make connections with them.
The plot, or rather plots were all over the place. The night before I finished the book I sat up in bed, getting increasingly frustrated with it all and counted how many plot tangents I had encountered…I stopped at 10. What was going on? Why so many attempts to confuse the reader? And why, oh why were there no explanations of anything important happening in the story? All the good parts were glossed over. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
The writing and narration were the cherry on top of this confusing mess. I assume the author wanted to maintain a sense of mystery by keeping the reader at arm’s length, instead all that was achieved was glorious confusion sprinkled with a great amount of frustration. I wondered why the reader had to read two full sex scenes, in detail, spanning most of two chapters, when other parts of the story that actually mattered were completely skipped over.
Overall, this story felt like it was meant for a reader who has some inside knowledge or who was privileged enough to receive all the details. It wasn’t for me and I can’t recommend it.
