The Raie'Chaelia
Although I was leery, after the big brouhaha, I wanted to see how the book stood on its own. Luckily the book was free for Kindle right now. Luckily Kindle for PC is free. Unluckily, I forced myself to read a lot of the book so I could write a fair review. I really tried. But...It doesn't start off well: The title is unpronounceable. Hint: You want people to be able to pronounce the title of your book so that when they talk about it with others, people can recognize and remember the name, not be turned away by your pomposity. And the whole apostrophe in a fantasy name has been done to death. Why not a semi-colon or an ampersand?
Moving on, the experience goes downhill from there as the writing is atrocious. It reminds me of my writing in middle school and early high school when I thought good writing meant lots of metaphors and similes and I sat with my thesaurus open as I edited my text so I would use what I thought were big and creative words. Anyway, I didn't get far enough to learn a whole lot about the plot. I was too hung up on the overbearing descriptions, some of which didn't make a lot of sense or were grossly redundant. Here is the second sentence in the second paragraph:
"Wind in the subterranean caverns that wove deeply into the heart of the land whistled a musical sound that echoed through the winding passages, falling just short of discovering underground secrets that were lost to the ages."
Normally I would have stopped there, but I really wanted to be able to review this so I could be brave and put up a real rating for the author to see and attack. I'm sure I'll be safe though because by now there are just too many people doing this that she couldn't possibly get to us all. Not that I'm afraid of reprisal. As I've said recently, I share so much about my life that anyone could find out who I am and where I live within a matter of minutes, which is really quite stupid of me. Moving on...
Here is the description of the protagonist:
"Chalice was also very beautiful. She had fair skin and a smooth oval face that was caressed by long, golden, butternut curls. They folded down the sides of her cheeks and framed her red rosebud mouth, button nose, and large sapphire eyes that were decorated with long dark eyelashes. She wore an ocean-blue riding habit that was split in the skirt for straddling a horse and laced with a wavy pattern down the sides. It was comfortable and snug in the bosom and waist, but flared out at the bottom. What held in her body heat, though, was her darkly tanned, hooded, riding cloak that she had made out of lambskin. It was resilient and leathery on the outside for protection, and soft and furry on the inside for warmth. On the ring finger of her right hand, she donned a golden ring with a rare, long-cut, ice-blue diamond set in the heart of it. She was told that it had once belonged to her mother. On her riding dress, just below her left shoulder, hung a sapphire broach given to her by her grandmother, Naelli. However much she valued these gemstones from her mother and grandmother, her favored possession was the golden pendant around her neck that she kept close to her skin, under her garments. It held a golden amulet that Papa had had crafted by Elijah, Créone's master smith who lived on the outskirts of Canton. The amulet was a circle that contained three lines meeting in the center and ending on the perimeter, not quite equidistant from one another, so that they formed what looked like a Y enclosed in the circle."
WAY too much detail WAY too much telling and not showing. Do I really need that much info about how this kid is dressed? I do have an imagination. I don't have to see her exactly as the author pictures her. Plus, red rosebud mouth? Large sapphire eyes? Golden curls? Has the author just copied and pasted from random fantasy novels to get her character's looks? Later we find that the girl is petite but a trained fighter and therefore feminine but tough. (She is also sure there is some mystery surrounding her childhood.) Wow, we're really smashing the stereotype here.
What I can tell you of the plot is that by 4% of the way in:
The evil King’s men have taken over her village. Her papa has sent her off on a mysterious mission away from her family at the time they need her most. She is bewildered but follows his orders like a good girl. She is to meet some man she doesn’t know. She is heading for beautiful mountains that are beautiful but dangerous by going through dark and dangerous forests and passing jagged and dangerous chasms. She believes trying to cross the mountains is foolish and only someone insane would try it. (Hmm, think she’s probably going to have to do it later?) She misses her grandparents and her friends terribly and wonders how they are doing. She remembers sweet little scenes with them.
She has vivid dreams of walking through a building with white corridors and then doing a bunch of weird stuff like look at books on shelves or at specific objects. It is obvious from the text that she will continue having these dreams as the story progresses.
At one point when speaking about some random creature, she says, "So that's what they look like! I never knew they were so weird," which was jarring and felt too much like a modern day teenager for the character the author has created. She later sees a bakery where the bread is in bags inside of baskets and a baking peel is used to pull the bread out of the oven. I could be wrong but I think a peel is a fairly recent invention, most notably used for pizza. That and the fact that the bread is in bags feels anachronistic. Yes it’s a fantasy world but she’s already established that it’s a trite typical one so these tiny details are really not the place to branch out.
About the love interest (whose face, of course, is “chiseled”):
”Those dark, intelligent eyes always burrowed into her when he was in deep thought. Jeremiah was the strong, silent type…
She is young (this is a young adult novel) and although she knew this young man so many years ago that she had forgotten him and they have just met again, his eyes always burrowed into her.
Do I have to go further? Do you need more to get this is a trite and poorly written book? Do you believe me now that I actually tried to read it but it was too awful?
All book quotes from: Douthit, Melissa (2011-05-27). The Raie'Chaelia. Couronne Press. Kindle Edition.