Review: Very imaginative, if a little lacking
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 03 18, 2014
I received this book in exchange for an honest review.And honestly, I couldn’t bring myself to finish the entire book. I had enjoyed another book by this author, and in comparison I found Urchin King to be, well, not very gripping and quite basic. The writing is simple (it’s very much all tell and no show), I don’t feel there was enough description or depth (like another reviewer pointed out, we don’t know what the castle looks like or how Paul felt when he entered it for the first time) and the plot (at least as far as I read) was also quite simple and predictable. However, in saying that, I recognise that I’m not really the target audience.But there is no doubt that the story is imaginative. Something which particularly stood out to me was something that I’ve only ever come across one other time in any media: in the story, when twins are born the younger is killed. I was really curious about why that was the case(, and unfortunately once it was explained I lost interest in the book).I tried to be invested in the characters, but there was just something about them – Paul especially – that I couldn’t connect with. Again, this is where the lack of depth comes in; you don’t really feel as if you know the characters. But of course, this could just be me not being the target audience again.Despite all the negatives, I’d definitely recommend this book to anyone who likes stories set in a medieval period or fantasy books, even more so if they are new to reading novels or are on the younger side of the young adult scale.