Review: Very hard to rate
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 04 29, 2014
I found it incredibly hard to rate this book so I give it a three star-rating - which is a middle-of-the-road rating. That is completely misleading, unfortunately, since this book was everything but middle-of-the-road. It was an exceptional story with a great and very strong heroine and a likable hero and it also had some incredible side-characters that were portrayed with both depth and humor.But as much as I loved the characters and also the main story-line, I did struggle with two things:1, There were just too many villains or semi-villains. It was as if the whole world, apart from two people (the hero being one of them), was out to get the heroine. It became confusing for the reader but, I suspect, also for the author since there were some confusing things happening that ruined the plot entirely. Most of the villains were completely unnecessary and didn't add to the storyline at all.2, The writing probably should have been tightened up a bit. The time-line went a bit back and forth and some of the writing was a bit repetitive.When that is said, this was a book that entertained me quite a bit - even if the plot at times was confusing - and seen through those glasses, my three stars are not fair. I've enjoyed two of DL Carter's books a lot - one of them (The Use) is a book I've reread several times and it's among my favorite books. I do like that DL Carter chooses to write books that out of the ordinary - she has a great imagination and does not pick the easy way out when she writes. But I also wish that she had an editor (or a stricter one) who would clean up the plot holes and straighten up the writing.This book has the potential of being an exceptional one. Today it's a three-star book but with a bit of effort it would have been a five-star one. Which again is why I found it so hard to rate this book - any rating would be unfair. Either too good for the book as it now stands or too bad for the book as it could have been.