A review by omnombailey
Etherwalker by Cameron Dayton

adventurous challenging slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

1.0

 What a garbage story.

The only thing I liked was the synopsis, which was what drove me to get this book to begin with. Even that was written better than this entire novel. It just isn't good. Every aspect is boring and outstays its welcome rapidly. Maybe people into hard sci-fi will love the pages upon pages of explanation, but it felt like unnecessary filler to me. All the way until the end, new elements of the world are explained. That doesn't make for good storytelling. The prose is either too simple or over-exaggerated. The pacing was awful, going from a four-minute chapter to an hour chapter. Many of the narrative arcs make no sense, especially the middle when Enoch is with the king. I had such a difficult time making sense of anything and I don't know if that was due to my boredom-induced skimming or the absolute lack of concise explanation in the story.

The worst was having to stomach the parts when Enoch stumbled upon ~a girl~ for the first time and he immediately thinks OH MY GOD SHE'S BEAUTIFUL. Every time. With every girl. Which sadly isn't a lot, considering there are only two girls throughout the whole story (maybe three if you want to count the cat thing he gets). And to make matters worse, one of said girls is subjected to having her wings removed/clipped, which reads like a rape scene. I get it was trying to be disturbing and paint how awful the king is, but wow it was really thoughtless.

Halfway through reading, I had to look up the author to see if he had written anything else, because this hot mess read like Baby's First Novel. Come to find out this guy has written stories for Blizzard and works there as a narrative something or other. And honestly? That explained a lot about this novel; it reads like a reject Blizzard game novelization. And that is not a good thing.

This book was a chore to read. I don't even know why I forced myself to go through it. Maybe I hoped something interesting would happen? Well, it never did. Plenty of loose ends were left forgotten and the climax was abrupt and uninteresting. Apparently it's the first book of a series, but considering there hasn't been a second book in five or so years.... Yeah. 

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