A Mortal Song by Megan Crewe

[MerryLove]

It's always harder to write a poor review than it is a good one, but there's a huge difference between not enjoying a book and being disappointed with the writing. This book started out with what sounded like a good premise. The main character thinks she is the foretold hero to save everything, only to find out that it's someone else and she's more normal than she ever imagined. Unfortunately, that is where the interest ends.

This book is supposed to be targeted at young adults. However, it felt much more like a children's or middle grade novel. This is largely due to the fact that the main character, who is supposed to be 17, acts like she's 12 and has very little growth in her maturity. The other main character and chosen one Chiyo, also doesn't quite act as mature as I've come to expect of 17 year olds in fantasy YA. She's also a completely unbelievable character. She's a typical, cliché anime magical girl, complete with big ponytails, light purple hair, and the ability to quickly master newly acquired magical powers. She shows no flaws, and she's supposed to be a central main character.

Not only are the characters flawed, but so is the writing. Because the characters are not human, the often change between an ethereal, ghost like, state, and a solid, corporeal state. That in itself is fine, but the author reminds us of the main characters state status way too often. There was a large chunk where the story reminded me EVERY PAGE that the character was in her ethereal state. She did this in her ethereal state. Then, she did something else, in her ethereal state. It was jarring and took me completely out of the story, on top of being extremely annoying.

The author also does a lot of telling about what's happening without showing. The story drags and drags because of this. Even the action scenes are dull, because there's no actual action happening. The author is just telling you what's happening. Unfortunately, there was not one instance in the first half of the book that grabbed my attention. After reading and trying to give this book a chance for about 50% of it, I finally put it down. If a book can not give me any good reason to continue reading after I've read half of it, then it is not worth my time.



Rating

This book can only earn a 1 out of 4. Because of the action-less narrative, I don't think I can recommend this even to young or tween readers. There are much better books in that genre. This is also definitely not mature enough to merit a Young Adult classification.