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| Book Cover via Amazon.com |
Opinion
Today I am giving a big thank you to Charles Franklin’s excellent team of helpers, who contacted me to review his book for him. I was sent a mobi copy, and I want to thank them for their patience on everything. This book is on Amazon right now, and it’s got one of the cleanest and precise covers that I’ve seen for something of its type.
For the start of the review I’m going to talk about my first impressions, and that was solidified with characters are built well. I love the main protagonist, and I love the way that the arch works for this character. Now I’m not going to spoil who the protagonist is, because I feel you will miss out on the exposition and thus the joy of the unraveling of the mystery that is the first act of the book. That said, there are some very positive aspects to the characters, and I enjoyed that.
That said, I want to give a warning to anyone that may encounter this issue. I had to read the first two chapters a total of three times before I finally got the basic premise of the story to move on. It really confused me, and I have no idea why because the premise is simple. So my recommendation, if you don’t get it the first time, give it a chance and try again.
Once I got past that and pushed forward toward the goal of reading the entire story, I realized the premise was a lot more simple than it seems. No spoilers though, I refuse to ruin the story for anyone, but this is a mix of several little things that are brought together for an overall plot. The problem that I had with the first part though, shall remain that I had to read it not once, not twice, but three total times to get into it. Just be aware of that, and I wouldn’t let it trip you up if you have the same problem.
For this next part of the review, I will be going into some critiques. For my first critique, we will be talking about the “Cliche Much” portion of my scoring system, specifically for the world building in the story. This is a series starter and contains about four different popular tropes that are relied upon to make up the world. In and of themselves, these elements are perfectly fine for any story. The issue I have is how they were presented and mixed together in the way that they were. Let me give a metaphor so that it can make sense because I do not want to spoil anything in this book. If a chef were to take eggs, milk, sausage, and potatoes, and cook it a certain way, the one eating it might have a gorgeous breakfast frittata.
If however another chef took the same ingredients and used different elements of those ingredients in his dish, the eater may be presented with a sausage oil and egg drop potato soup. Now, I am confident there is an audience for every kind of book there is, just like there is someone who will eat any dish that is created. For me, the elements that were chosen for the world building in this story did not blend well through every piece of the story. There are parts of the foreshadowing and also of the background in the world building that to me at least that was unappealing, and thus, I need to mark it. I do not take points off the art of the story, building a world is tough, but I do take notice if the elements that are chosen were not uniquely transformed for the story in a way that could capture the essence of the tale.
There is a minor critique I have under “Story Structure, Foundation, and Presentation” which is the issue with paragraph spacing. That said, I’m saying t his is a minor critique because the margin and line spacing for everything else is beautifully done, and I will talk more about the positive points later. Just please know, I did catch that the paragraphs were jammed next to each other.
My next critique has to do with the same category, and that is pacing. Most of the time in the story the pacing is adequate, but I need to explain that the last two chapters of the story have pacing issues. The action parts move well, but the resolution drags slightly. Despite the drag though, the ideas are conveyed well.
My last critique is a nonscoring critique because I don’t really have a category for this. It just was something I noticed, so I’m informing you all about it. Writing prose is not an easy thing to get correct in a book, and generally, I refrain from critiques about how any writer implements their prose. Earlier Stephen King novels read very differently than the more recent ones, all because the prose he uses flows differently from a storytelling cadence. I also know this is something I personally struggle with, and I am totally aware of how tough this is.
With that in mind, I need to note in “Children of the Forgotten” the prose is difficult to navigate at times due to the rhythm that is chosen. It doesn’t have that fluidity to it which makes the sentences ebb and flow to the reader's mind. Instead of semi-colons or em-dashes that could make things flow a bit better, often we are given abrupt periods to end the sentence. It almost reads like an essay in some parts, and I’m specifically talking about the narrative piece not the dialog. For example, a sparing section at the beginning that is very “Character A does this move. Character B makes a different move to counter. Character A responds with this other move” in its action sequencing. While yes, that is entirely a legitimate way to write a sparing session, it has no rhythmic flow to it and reads like clinical transcription. Once again, this critique has no score. I am only mentioning this because anyone who reads this story should know what they are getting into.
Let’s go into what I did love about this story. While I felt the world building was a bit of a mix of things, the characters were terrific. Each character and their being was well done, the ideas behind them, their convictions and beliefs were all well set. I had no problem with understanding a point of view from the antagonists to the protagonists. I love that about a story. This is very much a character-driven tale, so it is lovely that they all were well done.
Another thing I truly enjoyed about the story was the dialog was well done. I liked how the characters interacted with each other verbally, I enjoyed their banter when it came in, or awkward pauses when they arrived. It isn’t easy to write dialog, so this was a lovely thing to behold. I also truly enjoyed the soul-crushing ethical issues each character faced in their own ways. A lot of spirit was placed into each character, and that is a nice thing to read and consider in a book.
My biggest compliment I can give is how well this novel is edited, and how the grammar and punctuation are done. Em dashes were perfect, the ellipsis I saw were well set, I loved the comma use, and I was a huge fan of how the margins were. This book is beautiful to read, it didn’t hurt my eyes, and aside from the paragraph spacing, I’d say it’s darn near perfect. For an e-copy, this is marvelous. Someone took the time to really put in a lot of work to make this a pleasure to read. This should come as no surprise, it’s just glorious. The editor deserves roses for the hard work they put in. I really cannot rave enough about how pretty this read. There are classic fiction novels that aren’t anywhere nearly polished as well as “Children of the Forgotten” is. I mean this is more beautifully polished than the one I read for “The Phantom of the Opera.” And yeah, I’m raving about it, because it deserves it.
My next big positive, I love the work that was put into the religion features of the world-building, and I really loved the historical elements to the back story which pair beautifully together. While I had issues with some of the world building, this part of the structure of the writing was lovely. I could tell there was a lot of work put into these two pieces, how does one merge history and religion without bumping heads? While there was a natural conflict of the story, the battle was understandable and not uncomfortable with the structure of the story.
Lastly, and this one is huge, I loved that this was a whole story. While this is a starter to a series, the conflict of the actual story was resolved, and the setup for the next parts of the stories was done well. I didn’t feel this was ending on some uncomfortable cliffhanger. I felt this was given care for how the reader would think about it. I really enjoyed how all the threads were brought together, and I didn’t find anything that fell away to the wayside as far as story points go. To me as a reader, having a complete story in a series starter was important, and I loved it.
Score
So, once I took into account the math, I’m giving “Children of the Forgotten” an 82/100 which is a four-star review on Amazon and Goodreads. This is a fun epic to get started on if you are looking for new series out there to enjoy.
