Wednesday, April 4, 2018

Lyric's Curse by Robyn Wideman



I like to give people a chance. Just because one book was worth the Waste Bin, does't mean all of them will be like that. So, I gave Robyn Wideman another chance, just trying to be fair and not judge all of their works based on one dud. Turns out...I made a bad call. Yup, it seems that I'm just not a fan of Wideman's writing...or characters...or plots...or.... let's just begin.

Lyric is the bastard son of a whore and a mage who was crippled at a young age and forced to live on the streets. Only when he's been beaten near to death do outside forces supposedly keeping an eye on him decide now is a good time to take him in and try and make something of him. Lyric, it turns out, is a Dragonblood, a person who is said to obtain great power when dragons decided to return to the land, which is going to be sooner than most people realize. So Lyric has to be trained and nurtured and turned into a proper warrior to prepare himself for what is to come.

Okay...Lyric has black hair. Lyric has olive skin. Lyric has violet eyes. Lyric smells bad. There! I just gave you 15% of the story right there. One of the most irritating things about this book is that it repeats itself, time and time again, about stuff we already know. Everyone has to realize the same thing over and over and it's exhausting! It's exhausting having to read the same boring points over and over again and accomplish nothing for the vast majority of the story. It's just the characters confirming stuff we already know and if I'm told one more time what Lyric freaking looks like, I'm going to stab him right in his violet eye!

Also, there are way too many characters in this book and not nearly enough reasons to care about them all. There are subplots and detours in the story that really don't accomplish much of anything and just feel like the filler that they are. Not only do we have to worry about Lyric being ready for the dragons to show up but there's some princess (lord's daughter but who really cares) and her marriage tournament, Lyric's dying deadbeat dad and his venomous sister and her boy-toy, the local barkeep wanting to date one of Lyric's caretakers, a "love" side plot with Sexual-Harrasement Selene, and it just goes on and on. The book even introduces characters two-thirds into a story, giving us their full backstory and life history...just for them to show up for one scene and never be heard from again. How many levels of "I don't care" can I go down? It just got so unbelievably annoying after going through it for the tenth time in one hundred pages.

Also, I've heard it said that this plot moves too quickly, that it takes no time at all for Lyric to become a warrior and strong enough to beat nobles who have been learning to fight their whole lives. Bull crap! This plot moves so slow I've seen snail dipped in molasses swimming through a sea of glue move faster. It just drags on and on about crap that we don't care about and most of it doesn't even affect the plot. It's completely pointless most of the time. The sister character wants to rule the world...then changes her mind. This one guy is going to start trouble for Lyric because he's jealous...and he promptly gets his butt kicked and is never heard from again. The dragons are preparing their return and some are evil and some have love lives and some want peace and...yadda yadda yadda. These going-nowhere-subplots don't enhance the world, they don't make things interesting, they are just a distraction and not a welcome one. These characters have no purpose, no personality, and so much nothing happens for so long. It was unbelievably boring.

Final Verdict
I pretty much summed up my opinion of this book with that last word: boring. There's no suspense, there's barely any main plot, too much subplot, characters and character arcs that go absolutely nowhere and I just couldn't get into it. This is just the first book in a series that's trying too hard to establish things in the future books while neglecting its own story. For these reasons, I'm sorry to say we have another addition to the Waste Bin of Despair.

Have you read the book? What did you think? Comment below and share your thoughts. Please make sure to Follow Midnight Readings for instant updates. Have a book you'd like me to read or would like to make a recommendation? Contact me on goodreads at https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/65448711-michelle-beer

If you would like to read my book, Powerless, you can find it at:

Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/Powerless-Shelley-Miller/dp/1543482546/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1519062043&sr=8-1&keywords=powerless+by+shelley+miller

Xlibris: https://www.xlibris.com/Bookstore/BookDetail.aspx?BookId=SKU-001175242

Next Time: Swans...why did it have to be swans....

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