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I am seven percent into this book and I am already thinking about DNF'ing...not because the writing is horrible but because I am just not interested right now.
Maybe I should read the next book in que instead.
I am seven percent into this book and I am already thinking about DNF'ing...not because the writing is horrible but because I am just not interested right now.
Maybe I should read the next book in que instead.
I was pleasantly surprised by this book. My attention was first brought to this book when I was stalking a friend's shelf. The cover grabbed my attention (I'll admit it. I am a complete cover whore) and after reading the synopsis I was further intrigued.
As someone who is somewhat vary of self-published books, I didn't expect much when I divided in, even though I was curious, I went in hoping this wouldn't be a case of 'curiosity killed the cat' and it wasn't. This book was pretty good. It had it's faults, as well as the obvious cliches but it still managed to stand out.
After a couple of incidents, her aunt comes to pick her up and she is sent to a prestigious 'secret' academy. She finds out that she is a wanderer and she is part of a team with a protector and a seer. They all work together to travel through time. Each member has their own talents. A seer, for example, uses their ability to see the timelines of inanimate objects to find appropriate relics that will help the protector and wanderer travel through time. The job of a protector, is obviously to protect the wanderer and the wanderer is the one who has the ability to travel. Sound interesting? Hells yeah. The idea of teams working together to travel through time was really interesting to me.
As someone who is somewhat of a nerd, I can be a little touchy about the idea of time travel so I tend to be very picky but I can say without a doubt Michelle pulled it off. She weaves a believable story and there weren't any holes. You might find yourself wondering what was happening at one moment and later on the book it is explained. She doesn't leave any lose ends. Everything fit together.
The characters were pretty great as well. I had some problems with Sera from time to time but in the end it all worked out, I didn't hate her. She was determined and never let Max (I refuse to call him Bishop) distract her from her goals. She could occasionally be stupid in the way teenagers tend to be but she never went over the top.
And I am happy to say that this book didn't end on a major cliffhanger. Cliffhangers bother me. Unless they are well done, which is so rare that I shouldn't even mention it. It leaves us curious and with questions but it isn't overly dramatic.
I have read the next two books in the series and while those two didn't work out for me I would recommend the first book.
This review has also been posted on my blog
I have a weakness for stories about secret societies- it's rare that I'll dislike a book with a good dose of secrets, riddles and mysteries. This book is no exception- it is fantastic!
I received these books from the author in exchange for an honest review.
This last week I've been so busy, I didn't know how I'd manage to read this entire trilogy in time to review it for this tour stop. As it turns out, I was worrying for nothing. After finishing Wander Dust, I couldn't help but start Protecting Truth, which led to reading Seeing Light. Sometimes sleep can be overrated. This series is just about impossible to review without spoilers, so I'm really going to focus on book one. Since it's free right now, there's no excuse not to download it and give it a go.
Seraphina (Sera) is a great character; she's intelligent, bull-headed, and uses her brain when needed. Of course that isn't always the case at the beginning of book one! In a way, Sera's life really begins once her father sends her off to live with her aunt in Chicago. There she learns why strange things have been happening to her, and she meets the two people, Bishop and Sam, that will play an integral part of her new life as a Wanderer.
Bishop, the enigmatic stalker, is the Protector part of the trio. The attraction between Sera and Bishop is immediate and intense. My favorite character has to be Sam, the Seer of the trio. She's got a snarky attitude that I just adored. Sera, Bishop, and Sam make up a team of time travelers.
The novel starts out a bit slow but really picks up once Sera arrives in Chicago. Time travel is a touchy subject, but I think Michelle Warren does a decent job handling it. The combination of steampunk and magic is fun. Ms. Warren does a great job weaving the characters, story, and scenes together to create an absorbing read.
Protecting Truth definitely doesn't suffer from second book syndrome. It's every bit as intriguing as the first book. Seeing Light is probably the best of the three books. It's a great ending to an engaging series. I really appreciated the way everything wrapped up rather nicely.
I recommend The Seraphina Parrish Trilogy to everyone high school and up that enjoys immersive worlds and endearing characters in a story that's hard to put down once started. Fantasy, romance, and time travel all wrapped up into one series - and Wander Dust is currently free. Jump on this one while you have the chance; you won't regret it.
I received a copy of Wander Dust in exchange for an honest review and I wanted to love it, I really did. Unfortunately, it simply had too many issues for me, and I hit the 50% mark and realised I was forcing myself to read on. Well, as I read for relaxation and pleasure, I decided it might be better if I stopped. So this one is a DNF for me.
Why?
Well, whilst I didn’t dislike Sera at all as an MC, I did find her back and forth musings to be pretty contradictory at times, which made her appear fairly unreliable as narrator, and I felt as though I wasn’t really given the goods required for me to connect to her.
I also had a hard time connecting with any of the secondary characters. I’m not sure how much of this was to do with the amount of ‘tell’ in the book overshadowing any ‘show’ that occurred.
On top of this, there was instance on top of instance of POV breaches. With pretty much every side character, the MC ‘tells’ the reader of their motivations/reasons for actions/behaviour when she can’t possibly know this information. Whenever an MC decides the reasoning behind another characters behaviour/actions, this becomes an assumption and should be treated as such, and there needs to be a clear indication as to why the assumption is made. But there was none of this. The entire 50% of the book I read is full of the MC explaining why every other character is doing what they’re doing.
Then we have the very first ‘wormhole’ incidence. The MC is dragged through a wormhole, without ever knowing that she has this ability, or without ever having travelled a wormhole before, yet she decides straight away that she is in a wormhole. Where was the terror and utter confusion she should have been feeling at this situation. I’m sorry, but it was far too convenient a way to tell the reader what was happening instead of allowing the MC to slowly make discoveries and taking the reader along for the ride. I also felt the couple of comparisons to occurrences in other fictional tales was a little lazy for explanation, too.
On top of this, the dialogue between Sera and her aunt was extremely stilted and unnatural sounding. I had a hard time with the flow during their scenes.
And then just after Sera finds out she needs to be at the ‘special’ school, her friends she made at the ‘normal’ school suddenly appear at her special school at exactly the same time as she does with absolutely no question or discussion on this from the MC. Man, this is even more convenient than the wormhole incident.
It was around this point when I realised I wasn’t really enjoying the read, that I was ploughing through rather than being hauled through by intrigue. I did kind of hope the dude in it would tweak my interest enough that he’d make me want to keep going, but it’s taking so long to get to him, maybe because the pace is vastly slowed down by all the over descriptions of everything (I found myself skimming a lot)—descriptions that could have been cut to allow room for more show and plot unfolding and character development … I just got a little fed up of waiting, and when he did make a decent appearance, I found I didn’t like him very much. So I’m definitely going to stop at this point. Sorry, but this wasn’t quite my cup of tea.
