Author: Sue Duff
Publisher: Crosswinds Publishing (no website found)
Rating: WARTY!
This is book two of the Weir Chronicles, the first volume being Fade to Black which I have not read. Judging by how many novels are out that which share this title, (and that's not even counting those titled "Mirrors and Masks") I think a better title could have been chosen - both for this and the predecessor, which is also a very oft-repeated title.
I read to page one hundred in this volume, which is roughly a quarter the way through and I could not get into it at all. I was assured that although this is the second book in a series, it can be read as a stand-alone but that's not what I experienced at all. I was very much lost as to what (in the bigger picture) was going on - or even why it was going on!
There was nothing in the opening chapters to recap, however fleetingly, however tangentially, what had brought us to this stage in the story. Obviously no one wants a huge info-dump or god forbid, a prologue in a volume two, but certainly some intelligent hints at what has gone before would be useful, even to those who may have read the previous volume, just as a refresher. There was no such help to be had - at least not in any way that caught me up.
That said I might well have been able to get into this had there been anything of substance to get into, but there was not. Nothing really happened in the hundred pages I read. I asked myself, when I finally gave up, what would have been lost from the story had this entire century of pages been omitted, and I honestly couldn't think of a single thing, which begs the obvious question as to why these hundred pages exist in the first place!
This was supposed to be sci-fi, but all it amounted to in this first quarter of the story was a domestic tale of a young couple trying to come to terms with the fact that they couldn't be together, and that was pretty much it. yes, there was a bit of "shyfting" between dimensions/worlds/realms, and some sort of barrier which actually prevented them touching, yet failed to prevent them breathing on one another, but that was it for sci-fi. How that worked is a mystery, and the domestic back and forth wasn't remotely appealing to me. There was really no action, with what was not devoted to domestic events was confined to as bland talk about vague events and threats. There really was nothing to move the story forwards in any meaningful sense
There used to be a children's show on British TV titled The Magic Roundabout wherein this character named Zebedee would randomly appear. He had a single spring for "legs" and having appeared, he would say something and then equally unexpectedly disappear, and the main character in this story, Ian, reminded me of so much of that character that I couldn't take him seriously. His random comings and goings really made no sense, and I felt it had little to bring to the story in the portion I read.
As I said, I've not read volume one, but from what I did read, I got the impression that this book and the first book could have been compressed into one volume if all the fluff and filler had been removed, and the characters had been allowed to get on with the story instead of discussing kitchen damage, new suits, flowers, and so on.
I realize that this is someone's hard work and I sympathize, believe me I do, but there has to be something there to pull a reader into the story even in volume two, and I felt no pull at all. I was given no reason to care about any of the characters I met, and many reasons to eschew them.
Indeed, these characters didn't actually strike me as either appealing or likable, and I was given no basis for empathy with them. Most of them seemed to me to be spoiled rotten and living a life of ease and luxury, yet harboring undercurrents of dissatisfaction and complaint! I can neither empathize with, nor sympathize with characters like that when other people are so much more worse-off than they are.
Yes, maybe they felt threatened, maybe they were hiding out, maybe someone was out to get them, but I got no sense of that! The text imbued me with no feelings of fear or oppression on their behalf, and no sense of imprisonment, entrapment, or looming danger. There certainly was no evident impetus on their part to go out and attack whatever it was which purportedly threatened them. They seemed to be living a life of Riley, swanning around doing little-to-nothing of utility. I'm supposed to feel bad for them or feel like I should root for them? I felt no such thing!On top of this there was what I took to be a love triangle which is a huge no-no. Maybe it wasn't; maybe I misunderstood it coming in at volume two, but I cannot take love triangles seriously and neither should you. They're an almost ubiquitous, ridiculous, and completely artificial conceit of YA novels these days. They make no sense, and they do none of the participants any favors, so if this was one, it would also have turned me off reading this.
In short, based on what I read and acknowledging that I have not read volume one, I cannot in good faith recommend this as a worthy read. I should know better than to try reading a book which has the word 'chronicles' on its front cover, but I must say that it wasn't written in first person, so it did have that much going for it at least! Maybe you will find it more enjoyable than I did. I hope you do!
