Author: Bryan Butvidas
Publication: February 12th, 2012
Add: GoodReads | Amazon
Description: “Love is selflessly giving your breath away to allow someone else to breathe.”
The dramatic story of two lovers named Airith and Rapha; both cyborgs created to kill one another, who end up falling in love and causing the world to be scorched by The Sadness. In the end, one love will give their life away to save the other.
Via GoodReads.My Review:
I was lucky enough to recieve this book from the author in exchange for an honest review in one of the Young Adult Reads group's "Read to Review" events on GoodReads.With the story of two star-crossed cyborgs in a dystopian future world, each sharing half of one heart that they both need in it's entirity to survive, Airith - Death of a True Love certainly had an original and intriguing story premise. And being a novella (it took me roughly an hour and a half to read the whole thing), it would be quite a feat to successfully complete world-building and explainations of such a complex story in so little time. In my opinion, I don't think the author was successful.It almost felt as if I was reading a rough draft. The book lacked the "meat" of build up, getting to know characters, and understanding the future world, etc that are crucial in this sort of story. Names such as "The Mother", "Life Pool", and "Magija" were thrown around without any explaination until about halfway through the novella. Even then, they were only brushed over. I think that if the explainations, etc were added throughout the story appropriately, then this "rough-draft" novella could become a wonderful full length novel. Besides the things that this book lacked, there were things that it did have that bothered me.At the beginning of every chapter, there was a meaningful sentence or so said by "Woman's voice". It almost seemed like a movie script, which might also explain the to-the-point writing that I mentioned above. I see in the discussions for Airith on GoodReads that the author hopes to make it into a short film, so I'm guessing it was likely written with a movie in mind. If that is the case, then alrighty, but a heads up would have been nice before reading. The only other thing that bothered me was the confusing jumps through past and present. Under the number of the chapter at the beginning of each chapter, it also mentioned when that particular chapter took place. It jumped randomly from anywhere to "Today" to over "1000 days ago". Maybe I'm just dimwitted, but it got confusing for me immidiately. When that one thing happened, was that 1000 or 400 days ago? Was that before or after this event that happened around 500 days ago? You see what I'm getting at.
It really didn't bother me so much, but I think it should be noted that were some grammar errors throughout the book. A missing period here, missing comma there, missing new paragraph starts for new speakers (for most of the first half of the book, after that it wasn't a problem), and the occasional wrong word/wrong tense (past vs. passed, cover vs. covered, etc). Nothing that a once over editing couldn't fix easily. As I said, didn't bother me too much though.The unique story of Airith - Death of a True Love has a lot of promise, so with a bit of fixing up here and there, I think this book could become a real gem. Of course, everything I said in this review is my personal opinion on the book and others may feel differently. I'd also like to mention that at the back of the book (at least for ebook) there were pictures to go along with the story that were really beautiful and well done.Summed Up:
I liked the story premise and the pictures in the back were really cool too. I wish that the story had been executed better though, and there were some grammer errors and the story was much too short for such a complex storyline.
About the Author
Linny is the 18 year old girl and self-proclaimed mastermind behind Linny's Literature. She enjoys reading, designing, and spending time with her family. Learn more about her on the Meet Linny page.
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8 comments:
Thanks Linny for your honest review on this one. Novella are hard to write. Sounds like this definitely needed to be a whole novel, So you could get the real feel for the dystopian world. :)
My thoughts exactly Debbie. I think it definitely takes skill to write novellas and skill to write even full length dystopians because of world-building, so a less than perfect outcome was almost inevitable with this one. I think that if it was made into a full novel, all the things I marked it down for would be fixed and it would be a really good book.
Linny, I think that this story has potential (based from your review) to be a full length novel. However, I would advised the author to get a really good editor. The premise is intriguing enough that it made me want to read it as well. Thanks for the review!
I think you're right Vanessa. Not only could they help our with the little grammar issues, but I'm sure they'd be able to let the author know if things were too confusing, etc. Good point! :)
Hmm, the premise of this sounds alright, but it's a shame that the execution wasn't as good as it could've been - though novellas don't often have enough depth for me. Really great and honest review.
New to your blog (LOVE the vintage theme!)
Stephanie @ Stepping Out of the Page
P.S. Don't forget to enter my latest giveaway!
Thank you Stephanie! About the review and my blog design. :)
I checked out your blog and followed, I'll have to check out the giveaway as well.
I always appreciate good honest reviews! Great job on this one Linny!
Thank you! And yes, sometimes they can be hard to write, especially after the author was just so nice, but they really are great for the readers and the writers.
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