I’ve still got a few past collages I haven’t posted yet and as I was going through them I came across two collages for two books I really, REALLY did not like.

Why would I spend time on making something about a thing I didn’t like you ask?

This is a great question! 😀

I know for this one it was because I was hating it so much I needed to take myself off to look at pictures of dark moody places as a break between reading.

Review:

I’m not even sure where to begin with this. I can’t remember the last time I disliked something so much. Well I kind of can but it’s not worth mentioning.

I’m pretty much a ‘if you can’t say anything nice don’t say anything at all’ kind of person. When it comes to books especially, I hate to be just negative because it takes a lot to put yourself out there and writing a book is not an easy thing but sometimes, sometimes it’s just got to be said and I have got to say that this was just terrible.

Now. Disclaimer. I had a feeling that I’d be overly critical of this book. I get very snippy about books that are based in Ireland or have Irish characters, usually it’s contemporary but turns out this extends to medieval Ireland as well. This is not altogether fair I know but I think it’s the same for anyone when it’s their own particular culture or race being written about, they read something about their identity that’s not how they know it, understand or have experienced and it ranges from an eye-roll to being more than a little pissed off. Now obviously I didn’t hang out in Ireland in 1035 but I studied Irish Mythology in school (admittedly it was national school so I might be a little hazy) and I know a fair amount about the history between the Normans and the Celts as again it was required in school. So I can be snippy and I can be really snippy about little things like Brian Boru making an appearance 21 years after the Battle of Clontarf in which he DIED.

But it’s fantasy and stuff and sometimes you just gotta suspend belief, and history, I’ve found over the years. I’ve had to suspend belief when it comes to Irish history because people sure as shit aren’t going to research it so hey, let’s move on.

Let’s move on to the purple prose and the god awful dialogue shall we?

‘Take the reins’, Leif said, dropping them into my lap. I nearly jumped out of my skin when I first felt his hands upon my hair. With gentle yet efficient movements, he combed the hair back from my face, His fingers were warm and strong as they brushed against my neck, and I could feel an answering warm stir inside me. No one but my handmaiden had ever touched my hair, and having a man touch it seemed intensely intimate. A few moments of a tugging sensation, and then my hair was neatly plaited behind me. ‘Thank you’, I said quietly, I reached back and felt the smooth braid. How strange that this Northman warrior should know how to do something so domestic.

This is not anywhere near the worst of the purple prose, they usually came for about 4 pages at the start of each chapter but this is one of the quotes in the quotes section for the book and I can’t be arsed going through the book again to pick out something but this gives you an example of purple prose or is it just bad prose?

“Our tongues met, and the reaction within me was like the sudden flash of lightning.”

That sounds like something you’d want to have checked on.

Honestly though, most of the time I can find at least one thing about a book that I liked, in this case it was the cover and the fact that I finally finished reading it. That’s it. There is absolutely nothing else that I liked. I should have loved it. This had the promise of Celts and Vikings, Norse and Celtic Mythology, enemies to lovers, magic and battle and even if the history was wrong I should’ve been able to forgive it because all these things are things I love but every chapter was a different mythological creature and then move on. There was no development. Battles started and ended in 3 sentences but we needed to be given a page on how the wind was blowing! It was a mish mash of everything and ended up being nothing. I didn’t care about a single character in the book and I actually kind of wanted Ciara and Leif to be killed on more than one occasion.

Review from May 2018

My dislike of this book seems to place me very much in the minority so it’s fair to say you should take all this with a pinch of salt. However, I hated it so much I gave my special edition, and the merch that came with it, away for free. I don’t even care if that person sold it on for more money. Silver lining though? I got a blog post and a collage out of it! 😀

I mean it was a great cover!!