The Immortal City by Amy Kuivalainen
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Publication Date: September 19, 2019
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing a free copy in exchange for an honest review.
Dr. Penelope Bryne was publicly disgraced when she went public with research that claimed the legends of Atlantis were based on a real place, a la Troy, even though that struck this reader as a perfectly logical academic argument for her to make, and the whole "she's saying magic is real" assessment of the academic community was a giant non sequitur cause she never even implied that. When a woman is ritualistically murdered in Venice, with strange symbols scrawled around her, Penelope ends up heading to La Serenissima to consult with the police.
This book was . . . bland. After the first few paragraphs, I decided this would probably be a breezy fantasy-laden murder mystery---light, but fun. Well, light this certainly was, but the fun part ended up being nowhere to be found. The plot didn't just fail to grab me; things happen that are clearly meant to be major plot points, and all I could think while reading was "I am bored to tears". The plot feels like it has no stakes, even where it clearly should have stakes, and quite a few parts were, honestly, just very badly written. The author's sense of pacing was pretty nonexistent.
There is a certain sameness to the characters, a thinness, a superficiality; I didn't care what happened to them, and their dialog always sort of clunked against the ear. Everyone spoke in the same way, with the same voice, and that voice was . . . not like how people actually speak. The magical elements were handled in a weirdly pedestrian way, which . . . sounds pretentious, I know, but I'm not sure how else to describe it. Magic just sort of plops woodenly into the plot. There was no magic to the magic. I felt like I was reading about a billing argument in a dentist's office, not an ancient magical feud.
Overall, I'd say this was definitely a clunker. Not recommended.
No comments:
Post a Comment