1 out of 4 stars
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The World of Ato by Patrick Boroski, is imaginative and has amazing descriptions that make everything seem realistic. It starts with an adventure that goes awry and everything spirals from there.
I liked that the book had a girl as the main heroin and other strong female characters. I did not like that the main character was continuously made to act as if she were older than 14, her stated age. Her dialogue sounded like she was much older than described.
She has a friend who helps his mother take care of her because her parents are gone and she refuses to believe they are dead. Her friend Reed takes her to explore some ruins where she discovers a dragon trapped in a pedestal and somehow frees it. Out of gratitude it stays with her and uses it fire to make her paintings real and open portals into the worlds that she paints.
Throughout the book Ato, and to a lesser extent Reed, her friend, act much more mature for their ages and none of the characters have a problem communicating which is extremely odd; considering that most of them are from different worlds and time periods. the dialogue is bad, it sounds awkward and stilted. When the kids are talking it sounds like adults and the adults sound like a tv drama.
The other main characters that we meet later in the book are all seemingly unoriginal characters that are only there to further Ato’s story. too much emphasis is placed on Ato's ability to draw making it seem almost godlike even without the dragon making it real. There are many powerful characters in the book besides Ato but they are all there for the purpose of making her the hero without doing anything special except to make Ato a Mary Sue. While it seems like the characters would be well written they are not and come across as not that interesting or just not that great of a character.
The main villain in the story is a mystery for most of the book and is a very good plot twist that surprised me a lot and I loved it. There is a plot point that is addressed multiple times but never explained that seemed to be a major part of the story. This causes some confusion for the reader and is very frustrating because no answer is given.
The overall plot of the story is good and the reader is able to follow throughout the book with no problem. I would give this book 1 out of 4 stars for being poorly written, given terrible dialogue as well as uninteresting characters that should have been much more interesting as they were surely intended to be. This book is great for fantasy readers and early teens.
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The World of Ato
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