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A review by hostral
Cobweb Bride by Vera Nazarian
3.0
With a near-constant presence on the Amazon book chart and hundreds of reviews on here already, I didn't need to write a review of Vera Nazarian's Cobweb Bride.
This book is free, so in terms of value for money that's pretty much unbeatable. Like many freebies though, you get what you pay for.
The main premise of Cobweb Bride is that Death has decided to stop killing people. Everything lives forever, no matter what state they end up in. There are some quite gruesome states too, perpetual states of agony that should have been released by death but have not.
The larger issue is that it's not just humanity that is afflicted by this. Their sources of food remain alive no matter what they do to them, meaning that it's a race against time to find that which death seeks most: the titular Cobweb bride.
The first problem I ran into with this book was the pacing. I was told by a number of people that once you get through the first third things really take off. The issue was that the setting of the scene took an excruciatingly long time, and a lot of patience on my part to suffer through it.
There are some very intriguing characters in this book. The Infanta and Hoarfrost being my two favourites, both of whom have died and yet remain walking about in a corpse-like state of detachment.
Nazarian's prose is rich, possibly a little too rich and wandering for my tastes, taking an exorbitant amount of time to get to the point. You can tell that she's a seasoned writer, but that in itself is a pitfall with this particular text.
The problem with the text has already been detailed by others: it lacks urgency. The premise demands that characters start to rush, that things come to a head faster than the book allows them. As a result, you begin to care less about the goings on.
Couple the above with dialogue that wasn't exactly drawing me in and you're not going to get anything above three stars from me.
It's a solid book that I had a number of gripes with, but if pseudo-historical fantasy with a feminine slant and thick prose appeals to you then for free you can't go wrong.
This book is free, so in terms of value for money that's pretty much unbeatable. Like many freebies though, you get what you pay for.
The main premise of Cobweb Bride is that Death has decided to stop killing people. Everything lives forever, no matter what state they end up in. There are some quite gruesome states too, perpetual states of agony that should have been released by death but have not.
The larger issue is that it's not just humanity that is afflicted by this. Their sources of food remain alive no matter what they do to them, meaning that it's a race against time to find that which death seeks most: the titular Cobweb bride.
The first problem I ran into with this book was the pacing. I was told by a number of people that once you get through the first third things really take off. The issue was that the setting of the scene took an excruciatingly long time, and a lot of patience on my part to suffer through it.
There are some very intriguing characters in this book. The Infanta and Hoarfrost being my two favourites, both of whom have died and yet remain walking about in a corpse-like state of detachment.
Nazarian's prose is rich, possibly a little too rich and wandering for my tastes, taking an exorbitant amount of time to get to the point. You can tell that she's a seasoned writer, but that in itself is a pitfall with this particular text.
The problem with the text has already been detailed by others: it lacks urgency. The premise demands that characters start to rush, that things come to a head faster than the book allows them. As a result, you begin to care less about the goings on.
Couple the above with dialogue that wasn't exactly drawing me in and you're not going to get anything above three stars from me.
It's a solid book that I had a number of gripes with, but if pseudo-historical fantasy with a feminine slant and thick prose appeals to you then for free you can't go wrong.