Official Review: Campaigns Against the Olden

[AlishaKennedy]

[Following is the official OnlineBookClub.org review of "Campaigns Against the Olden" by Anna Faktorovich.]

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2 out of 4 stars

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Campaigns Against The Olden by Anna Faktorovich is the first book in her science fiction series entitled The Kingdoms Of Laruta. The four kingdoms of Laruta have been at war with each other for as long as they can remember and Queen Ronela is thrown into the middle of it when she marries King Lohsa. However, Queen Ronela is not happy in her marriage and looks for love elsewhere, getting herself caught in one of the most horrific wars Laruta has ever seen. The kingdoms are fighting over the divine nature of Niton who was thought to be a false prophet.

This book is relatively short being only 75 pages and is divided into five chapters. I found the author's writing to be straightforward and easy to understand but in my opinion the story lacked depth. The world that the book took place in was not very developed through her writing, I couldn't form a great picture of it in my mind which took away part of the experience of reading a science fiction book. Sometimes the author provided too many details and sometimes not enough. Everything about the world and all the background information needed to understand the plot was thrown at you at once and I found myself looking back several times to make sure I understood what was going on. Although I generally enjoy reading science fiction books, I have to say I was disappointed with this one. I felt more as if I was reading an informational article rather than a novel, there was no real climax in my opinion.

However, the formatting of this book was great and I didn't find any grammar errors. I also think the author did a good job with the characters, all of them having distinctly different personalities. This made it easy to form opinions of them and I did right away.

Themes apparent in this book are greed, betrayal, and finding love. The book includes sexual content and themes. For example, there are multiple explicit scenes and one of the main characters has a sex addiction. For this reason, I would not recommend this book to young readers. It's definitely for mature audiences only.

I would rate this book 2 out of 4 stars. I had high hopes for this book after reading the summary of it but was sadly disappointed upon finishing it. I think that the development of the world could have been better approached and would have improved this book immensely. I also think the book should have started out slower with not everything thrown at you at once and then proceeded to build up to a climax. I would recommend this book to older audiences that enjoy science fiction novels with aspects of war and fighting.

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Campaigns Against the Olden
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[RooneysReviews]

From your summary, this book sounds amazing! A war torn civilization with a Queen searching for new love; does it get any better?! However, I am disappointed to hear that the plot fell flat. It sounds like such a great idea with a lot of potential. I wonder if the book would improve if it was longer and the author could expand her characters and descriptions more.... I enjoyed reading your review!