ARA Review by JeanetteWatts of Apollo's Raven

[JeanetteWatts]

[Following is an OnlineBookClub.org ARA Review of the book, Apollo's Raven.]

---

2 out of 5 stars

---

Share This Review

---

Star-crossed lovers. Romeo and Juliet. Anthony and Cleopatra. Jack and Rose. Tony and Maria. Rhett and Scarlett. It's a classic.

In Apollo's Raven, Catrin is the daughter of a Celtic king, and Marcellus is the son of a Roman senator.

There is chemistry from the moment they lay eyes on each other. The obstacles are many and varied. There is not only the tension of Rome vs. the Celts, but there is internal plotting and scheming on both sides. Everyone wants power. Everyone is trying to outmaneuver everyone else, and uses every tool at their disposal to further their personal agendas. Catrin and Marcellus are manipulated, tormented, and physically beaten as pawns in everyone else's power struggles. They are constantly having to decide whom they can trust - including each other.

Setting the story during Tiberius' reign over the Roman Empire is imaginative and original, and I was highly looking forward to reading this book when I embarked.

Unfortunately, I was disappointed from the very beginning. This book was advertised as historic fiction, but it is clear from the very first pages that this is not the case. It is fantasy, put in a Roman setting. There are shapeshifters, and magic potions, and animal familiars, and out-of-body experiences. As someone who adores history, I find that introducing the magical elements completely destroyed my trust in the narration. Is a description of a Roman amulet or a Roman vehicle or a Celtic building accurate and based on research? Or is it just the writer's flight of fancy? There is no way of knowing.

I kept reading, out of curiosity, but it was a chore. The dialogue is very stilted. Without the iambic pentameter of Shakespeare, it lacks charm. It comes across as extremely juvenile in several ways:

1) Show, don't tell. It's a mantra for all good writers, and this book never shows, it perpetually tells. There is exposition during chapter 38. And most the of chapters preceeding it.

2) Similes. The writer uses similes like a school student who just learned what a simile is. A simile is cute, but it tells. It does not show. There are any number of good writing webpages that can show how to turn a simile into a well-written description.

3) There is an assumption that the reader is not paying attention. The writer has long since established that Trystan is the queen's trusted advisor; when we are 3/4 of the way through the book, we do not need a description of Trystan as the queen's most trusted advisor. There are repeated descriptions of the Roman symbols of Apollo. The first one was enough, readers do not need the same description multiple times.

4) There are painstaking descriptions of details that don't matter. In the middle of a conversation, people tap their mouth, or their chin, or pull leaves off trees. But there is no point to these actions. They do not even help develop character: all the characters have the same quirks. The queen and the Roman senator both tap their mouth before they speak. All characters watch their reflections in candle flames, and wave their fingers over burning candles. Everyone slaps, beats, pounds, slams, and raps on tables.

5) Speaking of the beating, pounding and slamming; every character, all the way through the book, in every chapter, reads like a hormonal 14-year-old in the middle of a rant. They scoured, grated, stomped, burned, ripped, slammed, flamed, blazed, glowered, rapped, furiously tapped, yelled, snarled, roared, and thundered. If a reader was to pick a sentence and read it without knowing who the speaker is, there is no telling apart the teenaged heroine, her mother, the king, the Roman senator, the evil sorceress, the noble warrior. All of them are stomping around having temper tantrums. The consistent immaturity of all the characters was, frankly, tiresome.

Because this book does show imagination and promise, I will give it two out of five stars, not one. It would greatly benefit from an impartial editor. Everything I've described above could have been fixed with some rewriting, which I am sure the author is capable of.

***
View Apollo's Raven on Bookshelves