Review: Unique world full of fascinating creatures
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 01 27, 2014
I did love the first half of the book once I got past the Dune-like overly complicated historical intro explaining the background of the world.  (Personally, I would have rather seen it explained on the fly rather than as an info dump, while there were other things that neglected getting explained like how Lilith found she had a connection to her brother, how she found about him in the first place, her first reaction to him being a monster, etc).  I love the idea of a world populated by genetically modified animals, but the problem here is that the book seems to be missing any descriptions of what the animals look like (except for a tail here and claws there).  Do they look partially human? The question arises because each and every one of them speaks perfect english, but yet there's no mention of how they'd be able to form words if they're still entirely animal (even with being smart) and for that matter, how they'd be able to do human things, like work in a bar, if they walk on all fours with no hands. While the story was fascinating with Lilith journeying  to unfamiliar territory, in search of a mysterious brother she could only hear in her head, and meeting interesting characters, and the characters of her brother, Aamon and Maltha were fascinating too, the story faltered once it hit the mid point and suddenly all sorts of new characters started getting thrown into the story, nearly at random with no descriptions to keep them differentiated in a person's mind, along with the problem of a sudden slow down in pace (as in Aamon and Laydon spent several chapters wandering  around their house just so they could get some weapons and similarly Augustin and Alani spent several chapters wandering the streets, enountering new character after new character with very little to differentiate each and it got even more confusing when the author referred to several as just "beast" and "creature" which does nothing to describe what the character looks like).  The best thing about this story though was how quickly I breezed through it. Even though it was all kinds of confusing trying to get a handle on what was happening and how to fit the animals into the settings doing basic tasks, it was an easy read with a wonderfully intriguing world and characters.