vampar's review
4.0
Revisiting an old favorite
I remember this was one of my favorite books as a child and I've read it a few times. This year I have been revisiting old favorites.
My memory of this was much more vague than other titles, remembering only that she was a were-jaguar and a scribe. While I enjoyed reading this again, I don't feel it's still a favorite of mine.
The beginning of the novel was slow, almost a slog, and the ending was incredibly unsatisfying. Many secondary characters are left behind with no knowledge of what happened to them. Many story threads are left unresolved. It was obviously set up for additional novels, which to my knowledge were never written. The dialogue is a bit rough and while much of the book is interesting, such as peeks into Mesoamerican cultures, there's just something lacking.
I've brought this down to a 4 star from my remembered 5 star favorite; probably closer to 3.5 stars if I take away the joy of my childhood glow.
A note on the Kindle edition: This appears to have been scanned from a print edition so there are many typos and issues with punctuation. Formatting isn't as awful as I have seen but it lacks clear definition between switching perspectives of different characters.
I remember this was one of my favorite books as a child and I've read it a few times. This year I have been revisiting old favorites.
My memory of this was much more vague than other titles, remembering only that she was a were-jaguar and a scribe. While I enjoyed reading this again, I don't feel it's still a favorite of mine.
The beginning of the novel was slow, almost a slog, and the ending was incredibly unsatisfying. Many secondary characters are left behind with no knowledge of what happened to them. Many story threads are left unresolved. It was obviously set up for additional novels, which to my knowledge were never written. The dialogue is a bit rough and while much of the book is interesting, such as peeks into Mesoamerican cultures, there's just something lacking.
I've brought this down to a 4 star from my remembered 5 star favorite; probably closer to 3.5 stars if I take away the joy of my childhood glow.
A note on the Kindle edition: This appears to have been scanned from a print edition so there are many typos and issues with punctuation. Formatting isn't as awful as I have seen but it lacks clear definition between switching perspectives of different characters.
karingforbooks's review
3.0
Not a bad book. I liked reading something set in Aztec times (before Cortes, long before) for something different, but it also felt lacking, like there wasn't enough focus on the setting all the time for it to be engrossing. The main character was fun, and different, but there were so many men! It would have been nice to see other females in the book besides the main character. The descriptions of the cities were good, though not engrossing, like I said before, and the book went by really fast, in a good way.
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