Friday, April 2, 2021

Tentacles and Teeth by Ariele Seeling

Rating: WARTY!

The problem with this story is that it was too improbable for me to get into at all, so I never made it beyond the first few pages. I don't mind fantasy, but for me, it has to be reasonably realistic - at least within its own framework, and this was not. The idea of a tentacled organism on dry land doesn't work for a variety of reasons - which is why we only see animals with tentacles in the ocean. The idea of what is, essentially, a giant 'kraken' taken right out of Pirates of the Caribbean, which is as big as a small house, and which has teeth and can move with frightening speed on dry land is nonsensical, so it turned me right off, but it got worse.

There was no explanation given for where these creatures came from, why they came, or how they arose. It was like the author was simply cribbing directly from the Pacific Rim movies and her hero Askari seems like a female adventurer from some video game - like Zelda, for example - so there's really nothing original here. I can see how an author wants to create scary beasts to make obstacles for her hero's quest, but the problem I see quite consistently in these stories is that these creatures are either of this nature: 'fish out of water' animals that make no sense (which was almost literally the case here), or improbably giant or mutant versions of existing animals. It's rather tedious and it too-often doesn't work. The thing is that there are plenty of real and scary organisms from Earth's past that with just a minor tweak or two will work admirably. You don't need to delve deeply into the ridiculous to get the effect you're after.

I didn't read far enough to see this myself, but after I decided this novel wasn't for me, I read some reviews by others and they were saying that the story is essentially one of each chapter being a new monster this girl has to escape or fight, and despite supposedly being the best warrior, she always seems out of her depth and needs help. This unimaginative and tedious metronomic rinse and repeat approach to story-telling made me glad I wasted no more time in reading further. I can't commend it based on the admittedly little I read. And Aerial Ceiling (near enough!)? Is that a real name? Maybe it is but it seems highly suspect, to me!