Review: Pilgrimage by Kim Fielding
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 06 27, 2014
This review can be found at The Blogger Girls review site.Mike gets the shock of his life when he’s approached by the goddess Agata, taken to another world and forced to atone the sins of his doppelganger. To do that, he has to go on a pilgrimage through a world that he has no idea how to navigate, let alone live in. Hiring Goran as his guide, he doesn’t expect to start developing feelings for his exuberant companion. After all, at the end of journey, he’s going back to California, another world away, and he’ll never see Goran again… right?Awww, man. Goran just about killed me! At first, I didn’t like that he was such a drinker. Personally, alcoholics are hard for me to handle in stories but once I discovered why he drank so much, I couldn’t help but feel for him. Goran’s had to handle so much death in his life that he’s barely holding on. Behind his cheerful demeanor, he’s really just a scared and scarred man :( Mike is very similar to Goran in that he has a lot of pain inside himself. While he may not know it, he holds it in to the point that he could be considered ‘cold’ and ‘unemotional’. Thankfully, we see who these two really are and how well they fit one another. It still broke my heart over how many sacrifices they had to make. I swear, the last 10% I had non-stop tears!My biggest issue with this novel was that it took so long for me to get into it. It wasn’t until about 55% when I REALLY became invested. The first half, though, just didn’t grab my attention for some reason, so I kept putting the book down and doing other things. The second half was when it really became interesting to the point that I was so engrossed with the story, I didn’t want to put it down! Although, I really wished we had gotten to experience Goran’s POV. I think it would have been interesting to see how different his internal voice was.Overall, I really liked the book. Once I finally got invested in the story, I adored the characters, their journey and the sacrifices they had to make. I even teared up MULTIPLE times! I just wanted to give both characters a hug because they each had their own issues they needed to work through and when they did, it really choked me up. If you’ve enjoyed Kim’s other stories and you enjoy fantasies, gives this one a try because it was definitely worth the read by the end!