****I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this honest review voluntarily.
I am seriously confused by this. But right from the st****I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this honest review voluntarily.
I am seriously confused by this. But right from the start, I want to say that this was a very pleasant read which surprised me. However, there are certain things I need/want to point out, but I would say that those are mostly minor things. I’m certainly going to read the rest of the series because the end was just shocking, and I need to find out more.
Oh, and did I forget to mention that the cover is gorgeous? It's gorgeous!
I am still on the fence whether I should rate this three or four stars. (Okay, after writing the review I decided to give this three stars. But it has great potential. If the author would go over this one more time, tweaked some things, added a couple of chapters to spread the information I would not hesitate to give this four stars.) ⭐⭐⭐
I was surprised how much I liked Taylor, she was generally very likeable character which felt surprisingly real. Not some overly strong superwoman. I felt so bad for her when she was forced to accept her role. And when her mum basically told her “just make him happy.” I wanted to take Taylor out of the story and protect her from all evil. It was so hard to watch, and I’m surprised that she was the only one who had a problem with it. However, the one issue I had, not only with her, was that they were sneaking around/doing something they should not and they kept yelling or screaming. I don’t care how scared you are or whatever, if you do not want to get caught, you do not yell.
The action starts right at the beginning, so, at least there is always something happening, and I was focused on the mystery. However, I have to say that from the beginning I was a bit confused and I had so many questions regarding their society, how they work and why. Which was a bit confusing at first and it even seemed like maybe the author did not think about it. But when I’ve got past the halfway or a bit more, we got a bit of an information dump. And so many things suddenly started to get explained that I was struggling to keep up and even had to re-read some of it to make sure that I’ve got everything. I would appreciate if it was more spread throughout the story. The book is relatively short. Several more chapters to start the book more slowly and to explain things more at the beginning may go a long way.
The main characters also attend school, and they are currently tasked to pass the final test which is based on struggles the original founders faced when they came. And I loved this idea; it was so fun. I would love to see the other questions the other teams got. But even here I have to question, how is it possible that some kids did not try to get the answers back at home, their parents had to pass the same test. Big potential for cheating if you ask me.
The “castes” were confusing at first, I wondered how they worked, but then we got little pieces along the way. I liked the idea, but it does not seem like a sustainable system. (view spoiler)[They are there for several generations. The Fallen (Christians) can have only one child, and if the child dies, then there will be no more children for them. I would suspect that their population would be down pretty fast. Because each generation is smaller by half than the previous one! (hide spoiler)]
I have to say that I do not read Christian fiction or any other religion, to be honest. So, if I knew how much religion is a part of this book, I would probably pass on this. And that would be a shame. „divided by religious castes “ – When I read this in the description of the book I’ve expected more “fiction”, different religion not only Christianity. But I do not find this problematic. It was interesting to see the(view spoiler)[Taylor’s (hide spoiler)] struggle to understand. (view spoiler)[Thought, I have to say that Taylor going from not believing in God and needing evidence, to believing was rather fast. Maybe if she started with acceptance, that they have no right to limit someone’s faith and then maybe believing herself in the second/third book? (hide spoiler)]
Some other questions I have or some observations I would like to share but could be a bit spoiler-ish. Better safe than sorry. (view spoiler)[Okay, so the Fallen are Christians. What about other religions? Were the people specifically chosen that no other religion was included? I cannot buy that some Fallen families were taken and promoted to Founders. Every single person had to see it happening. And I can get that they were threatened into silence but what about the other Founders? Do they want their children, unknowingly, mix with Fallen’s children? Don’t they suspect that maybe that those Fallen did not leave their faith behind? Which sort of showed to be true with Priya (their teacher) revealing herself as a Christian. They failed, they only managed to force the Christian to hide their faith if they wanted to move past their caste and now you can imagine that Christians might be almost everywhere. A serious flaw in the system.
Also, it seems that people can move from Fallen into Reformed by marriage. But the marriage is agreed to by their parents. So, how does this work? Children are brought up in a religious family, but then they are “forced” to marry someone and leave their faith behind? Or at least hide it?
When Teresa gave those books to Taylor, it was just stupid, especially Bible. If someone saw Taylor with it… I can only imagine that she would be executed pretty fast. Also, she then took the Bible with her, to school and took it out of her bag. For everyone to see! I would expect more common sense from her.
I’m sorry, but I do not see any chemistry between Taylor and Isaiah. It seems very forced for the sake of the storyline. (hide spoiler)]...more
I do not DNF because I do not like this book. I DNF because the Czech translation is absolutely horrible and I need to I need to explain myself here.
I do not DNF because I do not like this book. I DNF because the Czech translation is absolutely horrible and I need to get the English version before I can continue.
So, let me tell you the long story short. In 2012, I was in a bookshop (as usual), and I saw this gorgeous book. Let's be honest, the sky on the cover is to die for. So, I bought it. And then in 2013 I bought the second book and in 2014 the last one. But, I never read it. Until just recently, I thought that I would never read it. But because an amazing person recommended it to me, the first time I came to visit my parents, I decided to give it a chance. I read only five chapters and let me tell you, the translation is offensive with how bad it is. I looked for an excerpt to read in English. The voice of the narrator sounds completely different, in English, it's way better. Plus, there so many grammatical mistakes and typos in the Czech translation! It just made me so angry. And let me tell if I see those than something is seriously wrong with the book! Some sentences make no sense, things are wrong. When the book started, it was said that Echo and Bane are brothers but then, couple pages later it makes it sound like Echo and Bane are brothers of Soren.
I cannot bear it and let a poorly done translation destroy a potentially good book for me....more
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