"Just when Maddie Angler thinks she's over the death of her longtime boyfriend, Alvin, she discovers that he's not only alive, but he may just be part god. And a killer. Now it's up to her to unite Eight Worlds she didn't even know existed in the first place, before chaos reigns."
This was a bit like a day-trip for me. You head off out somewhere different, have a bit of fun, but when it comes down to it..you're glad to get home.
Pilgrim of the Sky isn't my typical kind of read, but I wanted to try something a bit different. From the cover art I was pretty convinced it was YA, and it was a bit of a surprise to discover that it's not. It's a very unusual read, which I think is always a good thing, whether I enjoyed it or not it's always a bonus to find something original.
If you like alternate worlds, purty Victorian dresses and some really quite odd sex scenes featuring two minds in one body, this is definitely the book for you. It's a fast read, and it's a lot of fun in places. To me it felt like it had a HUGE amount of potential, a good 75% of which sadly wasn't realised. Which is a real shame. Barron has some fantastic gems of ideas in here, which I would have loved to have seen fleshed out and explored in much more depth. We're rushed through a series of concepts, barely even scratching the surface. The wonderfully unusual slant on Christianity here, for example, is fascinating and I would have loved to read more about it. Same goes for the Steampunk touches, some of them are absolutely beautiful and to explore them further would have been a genuine treat.
As it stands, this one sadly left the potential behind and went too far down the romance route for my liking. This stripped it of the promising initial originality, and steered it off down a path I've read a million times before. Again, such a shame.
Overall I think it's a conceptually fantastic novel with some outstanding touches, but the execution felt rushed, the direction felt confused and the most interesting aspects went largely unexplored.
Shame that it didn't work out. I'd have started to lose interest once the romance started showing up.
ReplyDeleteJamie
In fairness it did state on the blurb there was a gfriend bfriend element, but..I thought it was just her chasing him through time and space etc. Would have been immensely more awesome if that had been the case.
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