Today I'm going to tell you about and review a new, "lesser-known" author's book, His Black Wings!
When I received the request to be a part of this blog tour, I read through the summary and decided I'd sign up for a review. I'm happy today I do not regret that decision.The plot of this story was really original and really interesting. I found the characters interesting and individual. Sadly, there were major flaws in the style of the writing.
His Black Wings is about a young girl, Claren, whose parents have just died. The day of her funeral, some rather horrible circumstances befall Claren and she is forced to flee her childhood home and leave her inheritance behind. While running, she realizes that the money she has cannot hold her forever and she must seek work. Luckily, there is an ad in the local town's newspaper requesting a live-in secretary at a distant country estate. Seeing the perfect opportunity to get away from her troubles, Claren applies and gets the job! But her employer is quite strange and dark with many secrets. Finally leaving for the country estate of Westwind, Claren learns there may be more secrets in that house than she's ready for.
This book is set in a future neo-Victorian era. The setting is interestingly built, but I felt it was lacking in conveying the author's research of the Victorian era. The terminology and word structure were often awkward and not characteristic of the era she was trying to create. As I said, the plot was extremely interesting and original. The deformity, the cause of that deformity, the story itself, were all very nice and I liked them.
The characters were all individual. That is to say each had a voice and a personality seperate from the others. I really liked that. Many times you will find the side characters have less personality and tend to blend together, but that doesn't happen with any of the characters here. Even Timothy, a young member of the staff at Westwind who never speaks, has his own personality. I also really loved the unique relationships the characters develop. The boys, Dekker and Horace, are cute on their own, but together they make a beautiful set of friends. Etrigan is extremely interesting in that we get to actually see his character grown and learn social norms. Claren as a character is a little weak, but not enough to cause serious issues in the story. The relationship between Dekker, Horace, Claren, and Etrigan is amazing and I adore it!
Now for the main problems I have. I felt that the story was poorly edited. For instance, at one point the author writes "less," instead of "lest" and another "awaking," instead of "awakening." I also found myself wanted more comma usage than there was. The punctuation and styling and diction were all very awkward and I disliked it. Maybe they were stylistic choice made, but I disliked them nonetheless and they made the book seem unfinished and poorly edited.
Though the formatting, punctuation, style, and word choices were questionable, the story itself was very nice. I enjoyed reading it, when I wasn't mentally correcting grammar, adding punctuation, or questioning word choices. Perhaps that is just the English major in me. I would suggest this book if your like original plot lines and can easily over look strange wording and lack of punctuation. Over all, 3/5 stars.
Have you read His Black Wings? What did you think? Did the stylistic and wording choices made bother you, or was that just me?
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| His Black Wings by Astrid Yrigollen |
His Black Wings is about a young girl, Claren, whose parents have just died. The day of her funeral, some rather horrible circumstances befall Claren and she is forced to flee her childhood home and leave her inheritance behind. While running, she realizes that the money she has cannot hold her forever and she must seek work. Luckily, there is an ad in the local town's newspaper requesting a live-in secretary at a distant country estate. Seeing the perfect opportunity to get away from her troubles, Claren applies and gets the job! But her employer is quite strange and dark with many secrets. Finally leaving for the country estate of Westwind, Claren learns there may be more secrets in that house than she's ready for.
This book is set in a future neo-Victorian era. The setting is interestingly built, but I felt it was lacking in conveying the author's research of the Victorian era. The terminology and word structure were often awkward and not characteristic of the era she was trying to create. As I said, the plot was extremely interesting and original. The deformity, the cause of that deformity, the story itself, were all very nice and I liked them.
The characters were all individual. That is to say each had a voice and a personality seperate from the others. I really liked that. Many times you will find the side characters have less personality and tend to blend together, but that doesn't happen with any of the characters here. Even Timothy, a young member of the staff at Westwind who never speaks, has his own personality. I also really loved the unique relationships the characters develop. The boys, Dekker and Horace, are cute on their own, but together they make a beautiful set of friends. Etrigan is extremely interesting in that we get to actually see his character grown and learn social norms. Claren as a character is a little weak, but not enough to cause serious issues in the story. The relationship between Dekker, Horace, Claren, and Etrigan is amazing and I adore it!
Now for the main problems I have. I felt that the story was poorly edited. For instance, at one point the author writes "less," instead of "lest" and another "awaking," instead of "awakening." I also found myself wanted more comma usage than there was. The punctuation and styling and diction were all very awkward and I disliked it. Maybe they were stylistic choice made, but I disliked them nonetheless and they made the book seem unfinished and poorly edited.
Though the formatting, punctuation, style, and word choices were questionable, the story itself was very nice. I enjoyed reading it, when I wasn't mentally correcting grammar, adding punctuation, or questioning word choices. Perhaps that is just the English major in me. I would suggest this book if your like original plot lines and can easily over look strange wording and lack of punctuation. Over all, 3/5 stars.
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