The first book in a planned trilogy by indie
author Shalini Boland, I won this title in a recent giveaway. As I
know how hard it can be for indie authors to get their work out there and
recognised, I decided to put all my other reading to one side and concentrate
on this one. I would like to point out that all opinions are my own and I have
not glossed this review for the sake of the author.
Presentation: E-book. I read mine on Adobe
Digital. It had 336 pages broken down into 30 chapters or roughly the same
length.
Story: In 1881, Alexandre Chevalier and
his family leave Paris for Cappadocia. There, they are to attempt to excavate a
recently discovered underground chamber – if it leads to the fabled underground
city, it could potentially be the archaeological find of the century. The
locals fear the find, though, and tell of the city being a place of death. The
Chevaliers dismiss the local fears as every archaeological dig is surrounded by
local mistrust and fear of the past, so they and the Swintons – British friends
who have joined them on this dig – pay no heed to these tall tales.
In the
present day, Madison Greene is a bit of a rebel, always fighting against a
system that so far has done very little to help her in any way. Her mother is
dead, her father an absentee parent, and she’s stuck in foster care with a
drunk with a temper looking after her; at least she and her brother, Ben, are
together, though. Then, on her 16th birthday, Maddy is approached by
a strange man who claims that she is the heir to the Marchwood estate and the
huge fortune that that entails. As per the stipulations in the will, Maddy and
Ben make Marchwood their primary residence. Ben settles into life and school in
the area while Maddy explores the house and grounds. In the basement she
discovers a bricked up room and her curiosity gets the better of her. What
could be in that room? Maddy intends to find out.
Thoughts
and impressions: The
story starts out alternating between Alexandre’s story in 1881 and Maddy’s
story in the present day until the two inevitably meet some way into the story.
Although this worked well and I much preferred this to any other potential
setup, I often found myself far more fascinated by one of the storylines than
the other (it alternated between the two), so I’d skip chapters in the other
PoV and then go back later. This and the ending were stronger than the initial
convergence when Maddy and Alexandre meet.
Maddy
accepts Alexandre far too fast in a bipolar like manner of switching to wanting
to kill him to wanting to protect him at all costs with no real period of
indecision in-between. The plot got placed on a short hiatus to allow the two
characters to become lovey-dovey as well. Proclamations of love came a bit too
fast for my taste but I suppose that they do at that age. It also verged on
Twilight-esque mentions of Alexandre’s physical beauty – repetitions that I’m
really not a fan of. Teens may eat that up, but I prefer not to be reminded of just
how physically attractive a character is – I feel like I’m being conditioned to find the character attractive; told the
character is beautiful rather than shown. Once the plot started again, though,
I enjoyed the conclusion to this first book - the last few chapters, when the antagonist had put in an appearance, were my favourite.
I found
Alexandre easier to connect with than Maddy. Maddy just kept making what I
consider to be stupid decisions (the party, dropping out of school at barely 16
with no real education, etc.) and isn’t much of a role model for girls – but at
least she’s a character with real flaws. Her clothes were frequently described in
detail: this is something that a lot of authors tend to do, I’m not
sure why. This is another case of a situation where I, as the reader, have been
made aware of Maddy’s personality and the styles she prefers and can use my
imagination from there on for the most part with only certain necessary
exceptions where the clothes she’s wearing are very important. I really enjoyed
the portrayal of Alexandre’s adjustment to modern society – his love of certain
things, hatred of others – it was all handled very well and gave an amusing
side to that stage in the story.
Some notes
on the French:
Alexandre
is obviously a French character and the author did a fantastic job of bringing
this across in his speech patterns and she occasionally used French in the story,
which worked in the story’s favour.
One of the
French characters, very minor role, is called Zizzy. I’m not sure whether this
is a period name but every time I read it all I could think of was ‘zizi’ (they’d
be pronounced almost exactly the same way) – the French equivalent of ‘willy’. Might be my warped mind there!
At one
point, Alexandre says “je vous mendie” – I beg of you. Mendier is when someone
is begging in the streets. The verb here should be ‘supplier’ and you need an ‘en’
with it, I won’t pretend to know why (though I should know) but both my brother
and myself would use the 'en'. “Je vous en supplie.”
Style: An enjoyable style suitable for
YA. There are some instances of clunkiness in the beginning, especially with
dialogue, but this soon improves as the author gets into the flow of the story.
There are a few things that escaped the editing process but that is to be
expected.
Final
verdict: I enjoyed
this one. It had an interesting take on vampires. I felt that this first book
was slow in places but a necessary stepping stone to the second book, which I’m hoping will
contain a more present antagonist and more of a threat. I suspect that this one
will appeal to fans of Twilight. 4 stars.
Extra notes: Language didn’t stick out to me.
No sex. Appropriate for teen readers.
