Series: Guardians of Legend #1
Author: J.S. Chancellor
Pages: 310 (ebook)
Published: October 21st 2010
Published by: Rhemalda Publishing
Since time immemorial, Man has lived in fear of losing his soul to the darkness of Saint Ereubus. For generations, the Ereubinians have wielded that power and ruled like gods. Three thousand years ago, Man irresolutely placed his faith in a mythical world. That world, Adoria, now holds Man's final hope. As the last stronghold of Man is threatened, the fates of three strangers become forever intertwined and everything they once believed will be irrevocably changed as they discover... Their time has run out.
This book confused me. In so many ways. For the first, like, third I had no idea what was going on. You're thrown into this world without any explanations for anything, and this annoyed the hell out of me. I think Chancellor was trying to put you in the middle of the action and be all mysterious, but I just ended up confused. I kinda get the feeling she was trying to avoid major info-dumps, but info-dumps are very useful if they're done well. You do get most of the information eventually, but it just would have made the reading a lot easier if it had come a bit sooner.
But then you kinda eventually get to the point where you understand more, and it found its pace and got good. Actually, it got really good for a while in the middle. The end wasn't quite up to the same standard, and I think it finished in quite a weird place, but it was much more readable than the first part of the story. The problem with the ending was that it wasn't really there...the author had just picked some arbitrary point in the story to finish rather than there being an actual sort of ending. It just stopped.
Aside from this, the story is quite good. It's an interesting idea (I think...I'm still a little confused in all honesty) once it gets going, though there's a little too much foreshadowing of things to come without actual events happening. And there are some definite, though I'm not sure whether they were intentional, religious undertones. Winged people (Adorians) fighting forces of darkness who steal the soul; you've got the Adorian (angel) Gabriel, the Archorigon (Archangel) Michael, and Seth makes an appearance too. Maybe it's coincidence, but I don't know.
Even though the idea was good, the writing itself annoyed me at times. I can't quite put my finger on why, but it did. It was just...little inconsistencies in the text and jumps in the narrative made it a bit difficult for me to read at times. Like, when someone was sitting at a table and somehow a guy knelt down in front of her, but then two seconds later was leaning on the wall behind her. I sometimes had to go back and re-read sections to try and work out what was being talked about because it wasn't at all clear.
I liked all the characters. Ariana was strong-willed and I quite liked her sense of humour, although I wasn't such a fan of the relationship between her and her brother, Michael. He in himself was fine, but they fall into the brother/sister relationship awfully easily considering that he's like 30 and she's 21 or something and they didn't know the other existed until a few days/weeks previously. Plus, if you didn't know, a couple of their interactions could quite easily be read as them being lovers rather siblings. He touches her lips to shush her, cradles her to his chest; stuff like that. And towards the end he started calling her 'dear heart'. This is a term of endearment which I abhor, though I have no idea why. So you know, not really a fan of that appearance. I liked Garren's journey, and think the torment of confliction he was going through was well written. The change you see in him between before (though there really isn't a lot of this) and after he meets Ariana is quite significant and very sudden, but you don't really get to see that much of them together which I would have liked more of. I think the change would have made more sense if there was a bit more grounding to it. And I so think some secret's going to come out about Koen...I'm just not entirely sure what.
So now I'm confused as to whether I want to carry on reading the rest of the series. There were good points and bad. I'm just not sure which wins out at this point...
So much confusion!
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