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A review by valie
Land of Shadows by Jeff Gunzel
1.0
Read this as part of the Fourteen Epic Fantasy bundle.
I was very disappointed in this book, especially after having paused the bundle to read the sequels to the previous book in the bundle, so good that it was.
The book has several major problems, the least of which being the highly cliche plot, storyline and characters.
The story could have been simple and OK and still be entertaining, but all the problems only made me wish it ended already so I could move on.
There's a lot of info dumping, especially about culture and society, but not once in the book did the reader get to read the so famous prophecy and truly understand what is going on.
The characters are inconsistent and I couldn't relate to a single one of them. They were poorly constructed, as was the world around them.
The group doesn't ever face any real threats, but act like they've been "going through hell" all the time. The bad guys are incompetent enough that it's easy to escape.
The MC spends over half the book denying he's the Chosen One, and nobody ever tells him what he's supposed to do, or how to do it, or how is he supposed to learn to use/control his famous powers, but in less than a week and only two attempts he has mastered his powers and can save the day quite easily.
Apart from all of that, the text is full of editing and writing problems almost to the point of being unreadable. Grammar, spelling and sentence structure made the text hard to flow and the constant and unannounced changes of POV made it very, very confusing.
I will not be reading any of the sequels.
I was very disappointed in this book, especially after having paused the bundle to read the sequels to the previous book in the bundle, so good that it was.
The book has several major problems, the least of which being the highly cliche plot, storyline and characters.
The story could have been simple and OK and still be entertaining, but all the problems only made me wish it ended already so I could move on.
There's a lot of info dumping, especially about culture and society, but not once in the book did the reader get to read the so famous prophecy and truly understand what is going on.
The characters are inconsistent and I couldn't relate to a single one of them. They were poorly constructed, as was the world around them.
The group doesn't ever face any real threats, but act like they've been "going through hell" all the time. The bad guys are incompetent enough that it's easy to escape.
The MC spends over half the book denying he's the Chosen One, and nobody ever tells him what he's supposed to do, or how to do it, or how is he supposed to learn to use/control his famous powers, but in less than a week and only two attempts he has mastered his powers and can save the day quite easily.
Apart from all of that, the text is full of editing and writing problems almost to the point of being unreadable. Grammar, spelling and sentence structure made the text hard to flow and the constant and unannounced changes of POV made it very, very confusing.
I will not be reading any of the sequels.