Saturday, September 12, 2015

The Carnelian Legacy by Cheryl Koevoet

Marisa MacCallum always believed that the man of her dreams was out there somewhere. The problem is—he’s in another dimension.

After the death of her father, eighteen-year-old Marisa's life is on the verge of imploding. She seeks comfort on her daily ride through the woods of Gold Hill, but when a mysterious lightning storm strikes, she is hurled into the ancient, alternate dimension of Carnelia where she is discovered by the arrogant but attractive nobleman, Ambassador Darian Fiore.

Stranded in a world teeming with monsters, maniacs and medieval knights, Marisa is forced to join Darian on a dangerous mission to negotiate peace with his cousin and archenemy, Savino da Rocha. Along the way, she starts to see Darian's softer side and finds herself falling in love. But once she learns that he is locked into an arranged marriage, her heart shatters.

When Savino falls for her charms and demands her hand in exchange for peace, Marisa is faced with an impossible choice: marry the enemy of the man she loves or betray them both and become the catalyst for a bloody war.
 


I was kindly given a copy of this book by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Promoting a book, movie or show can be tricky, especially considering how you are trying to sell a story. You want to make sure your audience knows enough so that they’ll want to buy the product, but not too much so that they don’t have to.
Sometimes, the information provided for one reason or another becomes too much and you end up giving away half the plot. It’s a messy stunt that almost never works, and I’m still trying to figure out why the heck would anybody use it.

This is something that happened with The Carnelian Legacy, just read that premise, don’t you feel like you know half the plot already? That should have been an indication for me, but what I read I liked, and so I ignored my uneasy feeling convinced that the book wuld be nothing like the summary.

Clearly, I was wrong. I know that I read an advanced copy, but the entire book felt too much like a first draft; it was filled with inconsistencies, plot holes, awkward dialogue and info-dumps. It really should have been revised a few more times.

The story is about an eighteen year old girl, Marisa who, after her father’s death she goes wandering into the forest and ends up in an alternate dimension complete with monsters, magic and a whole lot of trouble.

The idea the author had behind it was good enough, but her writing and plotting were simply too contrived and immature to carry it through. The explanations about the world were given through a bunch of weird info dumps; two characters could be arguing about fishing and then the history of the potato revolution could be explained.

The MC behaviour did not make any sense. She was thrust into this world she knows nothing about (That is btw some kind of medieval world where everybody speaks like modern people acting to be in a medieval world.) and all she can think is about the hot guy that saved her and that she’s falling for, even though she has been with him for a few days. But then he’s going to get married! The agony!! But then, wait! His hot, super evil cousin wants her! And even though he’s evul and touches her without her consent, he only has to smile for her to follow his every command…

There were no surprises to the writing, I could predict the ending early in the book.


Overall, a story that reads like a draft, with inconsistent characterization and predictable plots. Not enjoyable.

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