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A review by helene0707
The Fall of Souls by R.A. Moreau
2.0
++ I received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. ++
Sadly, I didn’t like this book as much as I thought I would. It has one major flaw which I couldn’t ignore; it has misunderstood its target audience. The novel expects readers to be familiar with Egyptian mythology (which they will be to some extent), but readers usually want to become familiar with something by reading. For instance, the weighing of a dead person’s heart. If I don’t know what the practice means, I can’t understand why it’s important. The novel should have taken the reader by their hand and guided them through each scene by revealing more and more layers of the mythological world.
The writing also missed the mark for me. The author used vocabulary that readers wouldn’t typically see in romance novels. How often do you use “reverberate” in your everyday conversations? Simpler language would have done much better since this is not a fantasy novel.
What I did like is that some of the world building is based on scents and smells. I wanted to see more of that. I’ve never been to Egypt (only Morocco), and I wanted this novel to transport me into a new fantasy world. We also get some good descriptions, but the overall structure issues ruined the experience for me. Less is more sometimes.
This is officially my first book from NetGalley. Time to celebrate!
Sadly, I didn’t like this book as much as I thought I would. It has one major flaw which I couldn’t ignore; it has misunderstood its target audience. The novel expects readers to be familiar with Egyptian mythology (which they will be to some extent), but readers usually want to become familiar with something by reading. For instance, the weighing of a dead person’s heart. If I don’t know what the practice means, I can’t understand why it’s important. The novel should have taken the reader by their hand and guided them through each scene by revealing more and more layers of the mythological world.
The writing also missed the mark for me. The author used vocabulary that readers wouldn’t typically see in romance novels. How often do you use “reverberate” in your everyday conversations? Simpler language would have done much better since this is not a fantasy novel.
What I did like is that some of the world building is based on scents and smells. I wanted to see more of that. I’ve never been to Egypt (only Morocco), and I wanted this novel to transport me into a new fantasy world. We also get some good descriptions, but the overall structure issues ruined the experience for me. Less is more sometimes.
This is officially my first book from NetGalley. Time to celebrate!