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Saturday, August 16, 2014

Accession (Sarath Web #1) by Terah Edun ARC Review


Accession by Terah Edun
eARC, 203 pages (according to Goodreads)
Published by Terah Edun and All Night Reads
Release Date: August 5, 2014
Buy it: Amazon
Rating: 1/5 Stars

Synopsis: Sixteen-year-old Katherine Thompson wasn’t trained to rule a coven. That was her sister – perfect, beautiful Rose. But when a mysterious plane crash kills off the heir presumptive of the Sandersville coven she has no choice.

After stepping in to fill her sister’s shoes, Katherine realizes she didn’t have a clue – faery wars, depressed trolls and angry unicorns are just the beginning.

For centuries, her family has served the high Queens on both sides of the Atlantic but it is a well-known rule that mid-level witches stay away from high-level Queens.

But when Katherine’s youngest cousin vanishes without a trace in the Atlanta court and no one wants to investigate, Katherine decides to step into the darkness on her own. She will soon discover that nothing, especially in a queen's court, is as it seems.

Thank you to Netgalley and All Night Reads & Terah Edun for this eARC copy of Accession. 

Looking at my reviews lately, it feels like I go from one extreme to another. A book is really good, or it's horrible. Unfortunately, this falls in the latter of those two. This book had so much going on, there were singing trolls, dark faeries, bitchy witches, inebriated unicorns, and evil were-peacocks.  Despite all of that, this book had no apparent plot to be found. It was like it was written from the seat of the author's pants.

With all of the different things going on in this novel, there was a lot of potential but the whole thing was a mess. It starts off with princess Katherine out on the double date from hell with her bitch of a sister and heir to their mother's throne, Rose. Then suddenly she dies, and I thought the plot would focus on her sister's death and her killer, but instead it seemed more about Katherine, who gets mad at every little thing, and her encounters with other mystical creatures. There was no plot line that had any continuity. The book ends at an odd place, the end seems to happen when there is still a fourth of the book left but it continues on to force a sequel. 

Main issue are the characters in general. Since there was no obvious plot, all that was left were the characters. There were a bunch of random characters, so many that it was hard to discern who was important and who wasn't. It seemed as if each character had the same level of detail as one another and were just as present in the book as the main characters (who I assumed were the main characters). 

What made more difficult to figure out who was more and important or what was going on was Edun's writing style. The book is written in third person, and even though it's mainly told from Katherine's POV it randomly jumps into the mind of other characters. In addition, it seemed like the author over used her thesaurus. Some of the words she used didn't match the diction of her characters and often couple words in a row that meant the same thing.   

Accession had a lot of contradictory details. The best way to fully describe this is by the following excerpt: 

"No, I don't think you do," Cecily said in exasperation. "They're not just physically addicted, they're dying.

Katherine's eyes were still trained on the mass of individuals gathered below their king. "That's not possible." 

She didn't bother turning around to debate the point. There was nothing to do debate. 

Still Katherine said aloud, "The faerie people don't get sick. They don't get headaches or ailments. They are in perfect health from the day they arrive to the day they leave." 

"I didn't say they were dying, Katherine," Cecily pointed out. 

And this type of mistake was repeated multiple times. 

Finally, the book did a lot of telling, instead of showing. There was no development of the characters, any time a new character appeared, Edun told the reader their entire background and how much the protagonist hated almost each and every one (for no apparent reason).  

I think that pretty much wraps up this review, I hope you guys enjoyed it =)

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