It doesn't always happen but sometimes when I review a book on Goodreads.com I give it less than three stars. I don't like to do this. I know how much work goes into writing/publishing/marketing/selling a book, and I'm still on the writing portion of mine. But sometimes I need to rate a book just "ok", which is a two-star rating on Goodreads. And the thing is, this book, and others in the series, have storylines which are worth a three-star rating at least. I'm on the third book in the Parasol Protectorate series now. I started reading the series last week. Obviously I like these books right? And I do. I just do not like the writing style.
The story itself takes place in a steampunk rendition of Victorian England. The aether (a common entity in steampunk literature) sort of takes the place of electric and magnetic advances. In addition to this classical steampunk trope, supernatural creatures, vampires and werewolves, join the cast, and the main character herself, a Miss Alexia Tarabotti, is a preternatural. Preturnaturals aren't a common paranormal creature. In this world, vampires and werewolves are created out of mortals that had extra "soul." Similar to scientific understanding in our current world, the book's world doesn't really have a good explanation of what the "soul" is. But they know that mortals who have an excess survive the change to vampires or werewolves. In contrast, a preternatural has no "soul." They live, they have consciences, they reproduce exactly the same as humans would. But they have no souls, and their touch renders supernatural creatures mortal again. So, in essence, they're the opposite of a supernatural. Hence the term preternatural. I won't get into the actual plot of the book, but just reading that short description of the type of world the book contains is amazing. It's exactly my type of book. But the characters, who I mostly like, and the intricacies of the world itself weren't able to make up for the writing style. It was written in third person, which as an author I like because it gives me some freedom to switch perspectives without having to indicate in a chapter or section heading which characters is speaking. It can, however, be difficult for a reader if viewpoint changes too often without an indication or pattern (as often happens in the Parasol Protectorate series). In this series' case, I think the possible issues with third-person are compounded because the author doesn't always refer to the same characters in the same way. For example, sometimes she'll call the protagonist Alexia but other times she'll call the protagonist Miss Tarabotti. And there isn't a pattern I've been able to detect that indicates why she's using a different moniker. This was jarring for me in the first book, and has been in the second book as well. I'm not far enough into the third book to make a judgement on that yet. Long story short (though it isn't if you consider the length of this post), I've given the first two books of the Parasol Protectorate series two-star ratings because the writing style is so jarring, but they are at least three-star worthy in terms of characters and storyline keeping me interested. If you like steampunk and paranormal reads (yes there is romance thrown in too) feel free to read the book(s) and give me your opinion on them. Maybe you'll catch a pattern I missed and I can go back and up my rating. Or we can just gab about the book itself. Happy Reading!
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AuthorThe author is a librarian who reads "too much" (is there such a thing?) and talks just as much. As an aspiring author she gets bogged down by grammar rules when she just wants to forget them to make a sentence flow, but never seems to be able to. She appreciates thoughtful comments and constructive criticism, but internet trolls beware, she's read enough fantasy novels to know how to defeat the monsters. Archives
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