Just One More Chapter

This was a slow paced Fantasy with wonderful world building. It had Strange The Dreamer(esque) vibes and believe me when I say that's a HUGE compliment. But here was this expansive, rich world with not much happening in it. It was a shame to waste such a promising foundation and use it as the backdrop for a book mostly filled with denigrating self talk and no drive, no tension no BAM! It sounds dreadful right? Well it wasn't all bad. The redeeming quality for this book was its writing, I just wish that it didn't linger in the quagmire of our MC, Ronoah's self-doubt so much. Our MC had the absolute WORST case of mental self-flagellation. We are bludgeoned repeatedly with this constant state of panic, reminding us over and over (in a bevy of different ways) of our MC's brutally toxic/painful mental state... it was borderline torture to read and that alone might be a draw for some readers but for this bibliophile... not so much. I wanted to scream... ball my hands into fists and glare daggers at my poor ereader... this, plus the plodding pace almost caused me to chuck this one into the DNF pile... something I hate to do but I'm starting to warm up to the idea. BUT it got rave reviews (somehow) so I soldiered on.

Unfortunately I kept finding myself having to reread sentences, sometimes a few times, trying to suss out what was actually meant. It might have been due to my sleep deprived, addled brain that is currently experiencing this book in the wee hours of the night/morning causing me to periodically drift off into the ether. I somehow doubt that that's the culprit but with all of the rave reviews this book has I guess it's a case of It's Not You, It's Me and I'll leave it at that. 

Overall:

This is sloooow... molasses on a Winter's day slow but the characters (including Gods, Godlings and other beings) were decent. I didn't love or even like our MC. This is usually the kiss of death for a book in my world. We are reminded of Ronoah's mental situation time and time again... the repetition and denegration alone, in and of itself, were annoying but having an amazing background for merely decent characters and a boring plot is a travesty. The rehashing of our MC's constant state of panic (and self loathing) took up too much page real-estate (imo) where some sort of action or tension should have been cultivated. I wanted to be empathetic but I just wasnt feeling this one.

For me, this is a tricky one to rate. On the one hand we have the slogging pace, the lackluster characters, the repetitive self-flagellation and the absence of any sort of action. On the other hand there is the evocative writing and well crafted world building. I'd put it at 2.5 Stars but GoodReads doesn't do anything in half measures so I'll give it the benefit of the doubt that it was a Me Thing and round up to 3 Stars.

~ Sorry