Saturday, August 24, 2013

The Obsidian Blade by Pete Hautman

Release Date: Out now!

Publisher: Candlewick

Pages: 320pgs

The Story

The first time his father disappeared, Tucker Feye had just turned thirteen. The Reverend Feye simply climbed on the roof to fix a shingle, let out a scream, and vanished — only to walk up the driveway an hour later, looking older and worn, with a strange girl named Lahlia in tow. In the months that followed, Tucker watched his father grow distant and his once loving mother slide into madness. But then both of his parents disappear. Now in the care of his wild Uncle Kosh, Tucker begins to suspect that the disks of shimmering air he keeps seeing — one right on top of the roof — hold the answer to restoring his family. And when he dares to step into one, he’s launched on a time-twisting journey — from a small Midwestern town to a futuristic hospital run by digitally augmented healers, from the death of an ancient prophet to a forest at the end of time. Inevitably, Tucker’s actions alter the past and future, changing his world forever.

The Review

To put it simply, I found this book, THE OBSIDIAN BLADE, was a tad bit . . . overwhelming. Well, for the most part at least. Whether that's a good thing or not, I just don't know what to think really after (barely) finishing this book. From the beginning of the book, while I will admit that I certainly went into this particular title with very high expectations considering a lot of people had quite enjoyed it in the past and the story did sound quite fascinating to me as well, but all I can say is that it's really different to what I'm used to reading from a sci-fi-like genre and I definitely give the author credit for that because it was really, really different. And pretty odd too.

While some of the characters were interesting in their own right, but I think what let this book down majorly was, one, having a slow pace which doesn't help most of the time, and two, having very little answers to some pretty big questions that was going through my mind at the time of reading this book. So when a book is slow and becomes confusing to me because I have no idea what's going on when really I should have some clue as to what is going on . . . that - to me at least - is a book's major downfall and unfortunately ends up ruining my enjoyment of the rest of the story. So sadly this book is bumped down from a two star to a one star as sad as it is.

Overall, THE OBSIDIAN BLADE is more for a braver reader who is looking for something odd and interesting. Now I won't go and say it was a terrible book since it does have its cool moments at times, but in the end it just wasn't an enjoyable read for me and I was pretty disappointed.

The Rating
1/5 stars

4 comments:

  1. Sorry to hear this one was a bit slow for you. I bought it myself back around New Years while browsing Dymocks because I liked the cover and it sounded cool. I think I might leave it sit on my shelf for a while longer though. I need fast paced stories to keep me hooked at the moment as I'm finding reading time hard to come by. Thanks for the review :)

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    1. I know. Like you I really liked the cover and it looked pretty cool too. I mean, the book was 'okay' I guess . . . but sadly not for me at all.

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  2. I don't like not getting answers to questions, it's so annoying and makes everything much more confusing! It's a shame you didn't enjoy this one but thanks for the honest review - I probably won't be reading this now (I might have been lured in before by the cool cover, but not now :P).

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    1. It IS annoying . . . so I'm sad that I didn't like this book. :/

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