Review: The Sjofn Academy
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 08 9, 2013
Where to begin with this one... I have issues with this book.First, the main character, Skye. She is perfect. Literary. She has no flaws. Skye is perfect at everything she does. Impossible archery feats (and they are impossible - Mythbusters busted it)? Skye's your girl. Perfect swordmanship without practice? Again, Skye's your girl. Excellent at kissing and sex from the get go, without any previous experience? Yup, that's Skye. She is so beautiful everyone wants her. And I do mean everyone. Even in  society like the Ha'kan that's pretty unbelievable. In fact, I think the author created the society like she did so she could have everyone mooning over Skye. Well, with the exception of the bad guy. But he's only in the book for 3 scenes. As such, Skye really is a rather uninteresting and scenes with her quickly become predictable. There is  nothing she can be bested at, so whenever she faces a challenge you know she'll come on top. There really is no suspense to any of her scenes.Second, through this book they keep mentioning the "Age of Consent". They never tell you what the age is, though. And, as you keep reading, you begin to realize that you are pretty much reading about a kid. Skye isn't fully grown yet, both in height and in development of secondary sexual characteristics. Yup, all them sex scenes are between kids. While I don't have a problem with mature teens having sex, per se, I certainly don't want to read about it in semi-graphic detail.Third, the plot. For 75% of the book (I read in on my kindle so that percentage is exact) there is no plot. Skye is awesome; she does her thing, people moon over her, we have some underaged sex, all is good. Then, BAM! Sh!tstorms all over the place. Some demon things appear (very briefly, with almost zero impact on the story), a dragon and her mate appear (I realize both the dragon and the mate are characters from the author's other book, but she really should have done a better job introducing them. The two sentences in passing? Those didn't do anything.) and are super duper awesome, a war escalades, the bad guy shows up to gloat, so forth. It felt rushed and forced and, for the life of me, I don't understand what the bad guy's motivation was. What was his beef with Skye? Was it explained in the other book or what?The only reason the book gets 2 stars is because the Ha'kan society was interesting, and it's ways were rather well explained. I would have liked to see it expanded beyond the scope of the academy.In conclusion, I know it takes a great deal of effort to write a book. And writing a decent book with compelling, complex characters is even more difficult. This author needs to work on her plot and character development skills. And, despite my complaining, I hope she does keep working because there was a good story in this, trying to get out. It just failed this time around.