ARC Review: Child of a Mad God

Hi everyone! How are you? Today I really wanted to sit on my laptop and write down the wrap-up post for my January’s readings, but… I have to write a review, because this book would go out today and I couldn’t end it sooner, so here I am at the very last minute! But before everything else let me tell you that I didn’t finish the book and I would repeat this over and over during the review.

Thanks to NetGalley and to the editor. I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Title: Child of a Mad God
Author: R.A. Salvatore
Series: The Coven #1
Expected Publication:6th February 2018
Page count: 496

As the Blood Moon rises high upon the mountain of the Usgar a demon hunts. But this is not the demon’s story. This is the story of a young woman, the daughter of a witch, born under the Blood Moon, how she finds herself alone in a tribe of vicious barbarians, and how she came to know the world.

From the bestselling author who created Drizzt Do’Urden comes a brand new series that is sure to capture the hearts of lifetime fans, and ignite the passions of a whole new generation of fantasy readers.

 

When I saw this book on NetGalley I was really excited and I was more excited when they approved my request! Some years ago (ok, almost a lifetime ago, since I am speaking of high school) I read some of Salvatore’s books and I loved them! Drizzt was a character that I really, really, really liked so I was really happy to read again something written by him. It was exciting, wasn’t it? I wasn’t expecting a happy and soft book, because I don’t remember a lot (high school was a long time ago!) but I remember that the author didn’t make Drizzt’s life an easy one, so I was prepared… or I think I was.

I didn’t want to write this review, because I received an ARC and I wasn’t feeling so keen to write a review for a book that I didn’t finish and that I received for reviewing, but in the end… well, I think it would not be fair to just ignore all of this. It’s not pleasant to write a bad review, even if this one is not so bad, and to write about a book that you don’t finish is always tricky, but it’s just more honest to simply say the truth and speak about the things that went wrong for me than to pretend that this never happened.
The point here is not the bad review, I may not be so happy about writing them but I think them useful for a ton of reasons, so I would write them anyway, the point here is that I didn’t finish the book, just to be clear.

So… about the book. I would write a review mostly in point, but first a couple of sentences for introduction. I think this book was mostly introductory to the series, I stopped my reading at 60%, so it’s not that I’ve read 10 or 20 pages and give up, I really try with this one, but the things I didn’t like in the first 10% were the same things I didn’t like at 60%, so I’ve simply chosen to give up. This book really wasn’t for me.
And in more than 200 pages (because this is a long book) it doesn’t happen so much, so yes, I think that this book is an introduction for this new series.
But now is time to stop to stall and begin with the serious part.
Things I didn’t like:

• The pace. It’s really slow. At first, I was thinking that it was normal because it’s a completely new world, with different cultures, places, characters and so on, so it takes time to set in the world and understand all, but it wasn’t just the beginning. It’s a really slow book, and even if usually I like when an author takes his(or her) time to show us his creations I wasn’t hooked up and I really didn’t care about the story, in the end.
• The chapters. A good thing about them it’s that all of them have titles, and this is a thing that I really appreciate, but they were too long. I don’t like long chapters but I can cope with them, usually, but in this case they are too long and wrong. I mean, in the same chapter you have different characters’ POV, but it’s confusing if you are speaking about a girl in the mountain and in the next sentence you are speaking about a man on the lake, miles and miles away from the girl. Or in the same chapter we have different time: one sentence the girl is a little girl, and the next sentence is “Some years have passed and…”
  I think they are just too confusing and I really didn’t like them.
• The cultures. The world is a big one and in this book (or, at least, in the first 60% of it) we see just a little part of it, but the culture of the people who live there is quite barbaric and this really didn’t sit well with me. I mean, in this case is really a personal thing, more than for the previous points, but I am not happy to read about cultures that think of women as inferior, as things and owned by the men. Yes, it’s not true for all the cultures in this book, but it’s true for one of them, and it’s the culture that is more important for the story, or at least, is one of the most important, and the main character is from this culture. Also, I stopped to read when we reached the socially accepted rape, because for me it’s a big big big no. I know that you can see this coming from far away, and that it’s coherent with the culture that we saw in this pages, but I simply couldn’t stand it, so that was it for me.
• The characters. They weren’t so bad but they weren’t so good either and I was expecting sooooo much more from them! Also, I wasn’t hooked up and I wasn’t so interested in the story, too.

In the end, I tried, I really tried because I wanted so much to like this book, but it just wasn’t for me.

So… that’s all. What about you? Did you read this book? Or are you planning to read it? And what about the author? Did you read something of his? Let me know!
Happy reading!
S.