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| Book cover From Amazon.com |
Oh yeah, no sour notes here, I’m getting into this review even with a cheesy intro. Take a deep breath, make sure you are paying attention to the symphony, and whatever you do, don’t sleep in the market while trying to get home. You may end up with a crick in your neck. This is a review of “The Seeds of Dissolution” by William C. Tracy.
Opinion
If you have been reading my reviews from December, you may notice I’ve become taken with some fantasy books lately. This one is no exception. William C Tracy contacted me for an honest review via my blog, and I’m pleased as punch to do it. This is one of those fantasy novels which makes the imagination flow. I picked up “The Seeds of Dissolution” from Kindle Unlimited.
For my first impressions, I want to begin with what struck me as a profound positive point. William created a magic system that is different from so many others and has a unique and realistic way of working. In this case, music is the key to magic. I love this idea. It isn’t in a typical kind of way as there are magical musicians in literature, but this is not that typical kind of thing. This is a fantastic concept for a magic system. I’ve read many magic systems, and I cannot get enough of this one. To think, someone could hurt you with music. Not just “ow my ears ach” hurt, I mean “Ahhh!! Make it stop! She’s killing me softly with her song!” kind of magic.
This story takes us on a journey of a typical red-blooded American boy who loves grits and allows us to travel with him on a tour of magic, music, and mystery. Among the fantasy trope contains a mystery story, a little bit of romance, and a lot of fun. This is probably one of the more interesting takes on an origin story that I have read in a while, and I think that it’s impressive how well this comes together in the end.
Critiques time, and before I go into this I’m very sorry if I’ve sounded like a nitpicking-nanny-goat lately when It comes to some of this. I promise, when I put a critique, I will be stating what category I score from. In the case of “The Seeds of Dissolution,” I have some critiques that fall into my “Story Structure, Foundation, and Presentation” category for my scoring. Primarily is a font issue, specifically regarding italics and standard text that move on top of each other.
To clarify, there is much internal monologue mixing with standard dialog and narration especially in the first 20 pages of the book. It’s not that this exactly stops after 20 pages either, it’s that it’s more spread out, but even after page 266 and so on, it’s enough to note the critique. I promise you all that I have no problem with the choice to italicize the internal monologue. Where I tend to have an issue, is if that italic choice is frequently encroaching on the regular text. It can make the page appear to have waves on it if you are looking at the book and not reading it. Now that’s not terrible in a short story, but in a book over 250 pages, it can hurt the eyes, and “The Seeds of Dissolution” have 391 pages for the total text. (Note: The Kindle version has 404 pages, but that extra is the teaser for the next book. I don't score the teasers!)
Let me also clarify; I have no problem with it in the chapter markers and how italics are used to bring the chapter together. My critique has to do with a line on the page contains both italics, and standard text because it makes the eyes uncomfortable to read after a time.
My next critique has to do with punctuation, and I think it’s partially because this book deals with fantasy story tropes. There is punctuation used in “The Seeds of Dissolution” that I do not normally see in any novel. To be clear, I do not mind ellipsis, semicolons or even commas when used properly. Where I get frustrated is if, for example, there is an ellipsis followed with hyphens or commas. Essentially, I the reader will intemperate it as extra pauses on top of the pause, and it also breaks slightly into the reading momentum. There are even bits of telepathy that have > and < used to indicate the lines. This also could have been done with italics or some other punctuation mark. Again, I realize that a lot of this has everything to do with the fact this is a fantasy story. "Seeds of Dissolution" is lengthy to read, and these marks break up the reading in odd ways. It can be very tiring on the eyes.
Now comes the part of my review where we go into the very positive notes of this story, and I genuinely have a lot to praise here. The story is vivid, rich, and full of fun images. The symphony mentioned so often is spelled out perfectly when it comes to the explanation on how it works. I found myself going to YouTube to get notes that I could put to sound, so I knew what was going on. This isn’t a critique, just my personal wanting to know how it sounded, or as close to possible. I learned much about music from this book and the fact that it was blended in the story.
Next and the big hit with the stylization of the book was the chapter markers and the little excerpts. I love it when a writer goes the extra mile on chapter markers that are beautiful and have bits of additional information in them. That makes me so happy. As a reader, it gives me a bit of an idea of the frame of reference for the chapter, it looks nice, and it’s just an added thing to the story. Now, not everyone does it; it’s not bad if you wrote a book and went with something simple. For me as a reader, it’s like sprinkles on a cupcake to a Cake Wars judge. The main cupcake is going to be under review, but there is something about sprinkles that add a bit of love and design to the cupcake. That’s how chapter markers are to me. They add that tiny bit of love to each chapter and make me a happier reader.
The other part I want to go into was how cool Enos and Inas are. These two characters add a lot of depth to the story. You end up with diversity in a world that is pure fantasy, all because of the richness of the characters. Every character in this story, even these two, have a uniqueness to them. I can see that a lot of work was put in, not just in world-building, but also in character development.
When we got to the end of the book, it was the right spot to end. I liked the progression on the novel, though there were some dry spots with the pacing, overall it was a good book.
Score
I’m pleased as punch with all of the scores to present “Seeds of Dissolution” with a lovely 88/100 Which is a 4-star review on Amazon and Goodreads. Are you looking for a fantasy novel with musically beautiful world building and magic? This is the book to check out, especially when you love musically inclined magic systems, or you want to see some fantastic world building with the magic. Until next time my friends, this is Mrs. Y, signing off!
