Review of Rise of the Savior: Acolyte of Truth
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Akshada Joshi
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Review of Rise of the Savior: Acolyte of Truth
[Following is a volunteer review of "Rise of the Savior: Acolyte of Truth" by Antoine Bonner.]
Rise of the savior: Acolyte of truth by Antoine Bonner takes place in a world where different deities exist and choose their acolytes. Amanda, 18 years old, wants to go to college and excel in karate. But when she realizes that she's the acolyte of truth and the savior of the world, nothing goes as planned. With the help of her fellow acolytes, she must face her enemy; the acolyte of death.
The few things I liked in the book were that the plot itself was good and the story seemed interesting. The author took inspiration from multiple myths and cultures like Egyptian, Indian, and Japanese. Instead of using names directly from the respective pantheons, he took words with meanings concerning the attributes. For example, the deity of death is called Chigaru meaning hound. And as we know, the Egyptian god of death is represented with a jackal face and is connected to dogs. The story focuses on the relationship between the protagonist and her sister, with no romantic interference. I believe this helped the book a lot since the relationship between the main character and her sister was in dire need of development.
There were many things that I found wrong with the book. Every character was bland and one-dimensional. None of them seemed deeply affected by their circumstances. The behavior of the characters is unexpected, in a bad way. In this story, we have an 18-year-old with the mental capacity and response system of a six-year-old, and there's a six-year-old who talks and behaves like a 50-year-old person. In an attempt to make the book appealing, Bonner only made it worse. The personalities of each character can be described with one word, which in my opinion is a liability to the story. The protagonist's sister is smart and emotionally detached, which is fine, but these two things encompass her entire character portfolio. Similarly, the main character is rash and impulsive and that is her entire personality. Throughout the book, I felt that Bonner took every overused character trope and exaggerated it; the hero doesn't wanna be a hero, a smart person whose only job is to be smart, a well-meaning but strict father figure, a pair of "friends" who only talk to insult the other and so on. To give the heroine some kind of depth through trauma, the author adopts less-than-favorable methods. There was a lot of inconsistency in time and place, and also in behavioral traits. The dialogues were blunt and lacked feeling. Amateur writing and delivery did not help the book. While reading, I repeatedly felt that if this book was written a little better while staying true to the original plot, I would have loved it. No matter how good the plot is, if the execution isn't satisfactory, it all sums up to nothing. This book is a prequel to the original and should have made me want to read the next book, but it didn't. This wasn't a thrilling read at all.
I would give this book a rating of 2 out of 4 stars for the reasons stated above.
The suitable audience for this book would be teenagers above 14 due to the use of profanities throughout the book.
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Rise of the Savior: Acolyte of Truth
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
Rise of the savior: Acolyte of truth by Antoine Bonner takes place in a world where different deities exist and choose their acolytes. Amanda, 18 years old, wants to go to college and excel in karate. But when she realizes that she's the acolyte of truth and the savior of the world, nothing goes as planned. With the help of her fellow acolytes, she must face her enemy; the acolyte of death.
The few things I liked in the book were that the plot itself was good and the story seemed interesting. The author took inspiration from multiple myths and cultures like Egyptian, Indian, and Japanese. Instead of using names directly from the respective pantheons, he took words with meanings concerning the attributes. For example, the deity of death is called Chigaru meaning hound. And as we know, the Egyptian god of death is represented with a jackal face and is connected to dogs. The story focuses on the relationship between the protagonist and her sister, with no romantic interference. I believe this helped the book a lot since the relationship between the main character and her sister was in dire need of development.
There were many things that I found wrong with the book. Every character was bland and one-dimensional. None of them seemed deeply affected by their circumstances. The behavior of the characters is unexpected, in a bad way. In this story, we have an 18-year-old with the mental capacity and response system of a six-year-old, and there's a six-year-old who talks and behaves like a 50-year-old person. In an attempt to make the book appealing, Bonner only made it worse. The personalities of each character can be described with one word, which in my opinion is a liability to the story. The protagonist's sister is smart and emotionally detached, which is fine, but these two things encompass her entire character portfolio. Similarly, the main character is rash and impulsive and that is her entire personality. Throughout the book, I felt that Bonner took every overused character trope and exaggerated it; the hero doesn't wanna be a hero, a smart person whose only job is to be smart, a well-meaning but strict father figure, a pair of "friends" who only talk to insult the other and so on. To give the heroine some kind of depth through trauma, the author adopts less-than-favorable methods. There was a lot of inconsistency in time and place, and also in behavioral traits. The dialogues were blunt and lacked feeling. Amateur writing and delivery did not help the book. While reading, I repeatedly felt that if this book was written a little better while staying true to the original plot, I would have loved it. No matter how good the plot is, if the execution isn't satisfactory, it all sums up to nothing. This book is a prequel to the original and should have made me want to read the next book, but it didn't. This wasn't a thrilling read at all.
I would give this book a rating of 2 out of 4 stars for the reasons stated above.
The suitable audience for this book would be teenagers above 14 due to the use of profanities throughout the book.
******
Rise of the Savior: Acolyte of Truth
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
Latest Review: Kalayla by Jeannie Nicholas
