Review of We are Voulhire: A New Arrival under Great Skies
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Adela Jiroutova
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- Latest Review: We are Voulhire: A New Arrival under Great Skies by Matthew Tysz
Review of We are Voulhire: A New Arrival under Great Skies
[Following is a volunteer review of "We are Voulhire: A New Arrival under Great Skies" by Matthew Tysz.]
We Are Voulhire - A New Arrival Under Great Skies is a first book of a fantasy book series written by Matthew Tysz.
The story begins with the young refugee, Galen Bray, who's leaving his war-torn homeland for a better future in the Voulhire kingdom. Throughout the story, we can follow this young man on his journey to new beginnings. The story offers excitement and is filled with the intertwined destinies of the Voulhire citizens, political intrigues, and magic.
Overall, I honestly enjoyed this book. It is a light read but with surprises and a little bit of tension, which I appreciate very much with my books. But I do have some notes to present.
The first couple of pages were a little bit hard to read as the sentences were really short and stern. It gave me a hard time to dive into the story itself, and it gave me a feeling that the sentences and the scene ended before it even had a chance to start. It got better later on, as the story advanced, and there were dialogues inserted into the narrative. Another reason for the rough start is multiple POVs and a lot of information thrown at the reader all at once. To a person, who's not used to reading fantasy books, it can be a little bit overwhelming.
What I found interesting, and it's something I don't find very often in the books, is the difference in the way the story is presented to a reader by the characters. For a better understanding, when the story is focused on the main character, Galen Bray, we are seeing the story from his point of view (also known as ich form). However, the lives of the other characters, and their thoughts are recited to us by the narrator (er form).
As a person who appreciates attention to detail a lot, I was a little bit sad about the lack of description of the characters. With some of the characters, you can't be sure how old they actually are throughout most of the story, as their age is presented basically at the end of the book, or not at all.
Here and there, the person's hair color and eye color are mentioned. But there is basically no description of a body shape, facial structure, or even the sound of the voice of most of the characters. Unfortunately, missing these details, or presenting them so late in the book, makes the characters practically faceless in the mind of the reader.
At last, what streaked my interest is even though it is a fantasy novel, we can see the elements of modern times here, such as cardboard, photos, and steam inventions, which is not that common in the fantasy genre.
In summary, I would rate this book four stars out of five. The reason for my rating is that I enjoyed the book very much, and I would be willing to read the rest of the series, to see where the story goes. Nevertheless, I had to remove one of the stars for the reasons listed above, as there are some things that I missed in the body of the narrative. Another reason for my rating is that the editing of this book was very well done. There were no typos (at least none that I could find), but I was sometimes put off by the presence of the brackets, which is also something that is not that common in the fantasy genre.
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We are Voulhire: A New Arrival under Great Skies
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
We Are Voulhire - A New Arrival Under Great Skies is a first book of a fantasy book series written by Matthew Tysz.
The story begins with the young refugee, Galen Bray, who's leaving his war-torn homeland for a better future in the Voulhire kingdom. Throughout the story, we can follow this young man on his journey to new beginnings. The story offers excitement and is filled with the intertwined destinies of the Voulhire citizens, political intrigues, and magic.
Overall, I honestly enjoyed this book. It is a light read but with surprises and a little bit of tension, which I appreciate very much with my books. But I do have some notes to present.
The first couple of pages were a little bit hard to read as the sentences were really short and stern. It gave me a hard time to dive into the story itself, and it gave me a feeling that the sentences and the scene ended before it even had a chance to start. It got better later on, as the story advanced, and there were dialogues inserted into the narrative. Another reason for the rough start is multiple POVs and a lot of information thrown at the reader all at once. To a person, who's not used to reading fantasy books, it can be a little bit overwhelming.
What I found interesting, and it's something I don't find very often in the books, is the difference in the way the story is presented to a reader by the characters. For a better understanding, when the story is focused on the main character, Galen Bray, we are seeing the story from his point of view (also known as ich form). However, the lives of the other characters, and their thoughts are recited to us by the narrator (er form).
As a person who appreciates attention to detail a lot, I was a little bit sad about the lack of description of the characters. With some of the characters, you can't be sure how old they actually are throughout most of the story, as their age is presented basically at the end of the book, or not at all.
Here and there, the person's hair color and eye color are mentioned. But there is basically no description of a body shape, facial structure, or even the sound of the voice of most of the characters. Unfortunately, missing these details, or presenting them so late in the book, makes the characters practically faceless in the mind of the reader.
At last, what streaked my interest is even though it is a fantasy novel, we can see the elements of modern times here, such as cardboard, photos, and steam inventions, which is not that common in the fantasy genre.
In summary, I would rate this book four stars out of five. The reason for my rating is that I enjoyed the book very much, and I would be willing to read the rest of the series, to see where the story goes. Nevertheless, I had to remove one of the stars for the reasons listed above, as there are some things that I missed in the body of the narrative. Another reason for my rating is that the editing of this book was very well done. There were no typos (at least none that I could find), but I was sometimes put off by the presence of the brackets, which is also something that is not that common in the fantasy genre.
******
We are Voulhire: A New Arrival under Great Skies
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
