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A review by everybody
Darkness Haunts by Susan Illene
Did not finish book.
I really enjoyed this one initially as it didn't follow a lot of the stupid clichées.
Yea, we have a badass heroine but a lot of effort went into making sure things are kept "real".
Things like well-defined "power levels" and believable fight flow. Things like realistic torture or the emotional impact of different kinds of trauma and shock.
All these kinds of things and more are initially kept very believable.
A lot of effort went into small details which made the world feel believable and I did appreciate that a lot.
The plot wasn't groundbreaking but it wasn't just a collection of old clichées like I usually see.
There is a bit of covert plot convenience going on and unnecessary vague foreshadowing bordering on prophecy by a druid (which is a personal pet peeve of mine) annoyed me but all in all, there weren't any major flaws.
I was completely baffled by the comparatively low rating at first.
But then while approaching the 3/4 mark things regrettably went downhill fast.
Facts are suddenly made up on the spot non-stop sometimes completely contradicting previous information.
The biggest issue with the magic is the number of possibilities that the on the spot made up stuff theoretically allows. Any semi-intelligent person could use those in devastating ways but no one does because the author just didn't think about the ramifications of all those cheap throw-away plot devices.
The magic system is rather soft so you really have to disregard common sense to cause obvious holes in it like that.
The concept of "show, don't tell" flies right out the window repeatedly. Characters start saying out loud what they feel in a very awkward way that is clearly meant for the benefit of the reader instead of showing it in a natural way even tho the author has clearly proven she is capable of doing it right.
I really don't know what happened here. Maybe the author had a bad slump but had to finish within a deadline or something?
I had a sense this might be a fresh breeze in the rather stale genre. I felt like the book had the guts to deviate from beaten paths and not fall into every clichée trap out there like most in this genre do.
For that, I am actually willing to put up with quite a bit of roughness on the edges but ultimately despite a promising start, it didn't happen.
It ended up just aggressively preaching the power of friendship and all that crap like all the others do. Ethical dilemmas and morally ambiguous decisions and their consequences are just being fixed with cheap copouts like "turns out that person was pure evil anyway".
A world that clearly had the potential to have many shades of grey sadly crumbled into naive black and white just pretending to be something more.
And what is going on with the sudden flirting and touching followed by swooning around multiple flaming hot guys?
It ends so incredibly cheese that I couldn't take the last few pages and dnfed like 15 minutes before the end.
It felt like the author replaced her calligraphy feather with a wax crayon part-way through the story.
Yea, we have a badass heroine but a lot of effort went into making sure things are kept "real".
Things like well-defined "power levels" and believable fight flow. Things like realistic torture or the emotional impact of different kinds of trauma and shock.
All these kinds of things and more are initially kept very believable.
A lot of effort went into small details which made the world feel believable and I did appreciate that a lot.
The plot wasn't groundbreaking but it wasn't just a collection of old clichées like I usually see.
There is a bit of covert plot convenience going on and unnecessary vague foreshadowing bordering on prophecy by a druid (which is a personal pet peeve of mine) annoyed me but all in all, there weren't any major flaws.
I was completely baffled by the comparatively low rating at first.
But then while approaching the 3/4 mark things regrettably went downhill fast.
Facts are suddenly made up on the spot non-stop sometimes completely contradicting previous information.
The biggest issue with the magic is the number of possibilities that the on the spot made up stuff theoretically allows. Any semi-intelligent person could use those in devastating ways but no one does because the author just didn't think about the ramifications of all those cheap throw-away plot devices.
The magic system is rather soft so you really have to disregard common sense to cause obvious holes in it like that.
The concept of "show, don't tell" flies right out the window repeatedly. Characters start saying out loud what they feel in a very awkward way that is clearly meant for the benefit of the reader instead of showing it in a natural way even tho the author has clearly proven she is capable of doing it right.
I really don't know what happened here. Maybe the author had a bad slump but had to finish within a deadline or something?
I had a sense this might be a fresh breeze in the rather stale genre. I felt like the book had the guts to deviate from beaten paths and not fall into every clichée trap out there like most in this genre do.
For that, I am actually willing to put up with quite a bit of roughness on the edges but ultimately despite a promising start, it didn't happen.
It ended up just aggressively preaching the power of friendship and all that crap like all the others do. Ethical dilemmas and morally ambiguous decisions and their consequences are just being fixed with cheap copouts like "turns out that person was pure evil anyway".
A world that clearly had the potential to have many shades of grey sadly crumbled into naive black and white just pretending to be something more.
And what is going on with the sudden flirting and touching followed by swooning around multiple flaming hot guys?
It ends so incredibly cheese that I couldn't take the last few pages and dnfed like 15 minutes before the end.
It felt like the author replaced her calligraphy feather with a wax crayon part-way through the story.