Shawe Ruckus

I felt very unsettled reading this book. Not sure what the whole first, in London, part was. There were many characters that didn’t add anything to the story, and when the couple went to China I was more invested. But being invested doesn’t mean that you can understand what is going on. The story was choppy, and I didn’t really get it was a mystery…The references date the book
— everything from a now defunct rugby team, or a television show that’s been off the air for years. show more There’s a good story there but cutting everything from London, and reworking the writing would be helpful. show less

I thank the author for giving me an ARC copy!

I requested a copy of this book because the Egyptian cat cover looked very cool. Even though it is a book 2 in the series, the story is so vague that reading book 1 isn't necessary.

From the verbose overdescription in this book (not to mention the literal mountains of research for the linguistic and historical references), I am wondering if the author is neurodivergent perhaps? By itself, this is not an issue at all. When books are well edited and show more the word filler cut out for increased clarity, I have read plenty of indie books by neurodivergent authors and adored their unique ability to explore themes that are seldom handelled.

I was 1/3 into this story, and still didn't see a full-fledged plot. It seems like we have two POVs: a group of teenagers with diverse backgrounds that seldom ever appear in the book but I surmised are the protagonists, and a revived Adolf Hitler who has to conquer the world.

Wordiness abounds in this book by the bucketloads which stiffled the advancement of the story to a screeching halt 90% of the way. Okay, I understand very well that some mysterious being revived/saved/cloned/whatever Adolf Hitler, gave him updated knowledge of what happened to the world after WWII and hopes he sends a dinosaur army to stomp the world.

By the sheer description, having Adolf order dinosaurs stomp cities sounds very cool. He even has a robot butler that speaks Japanese! The problem is that even though I spotted zero spelling errors in the book, we have endless pages where whoever is controlling Adolf is telling him to punish... well anyone that doesn't follow a very stringent small percentage of the world population. And the group of targetted people and political adversaries just goes on and on. I mean, K2 mountains of paragraphs solely listing an endless list of enemies. With good editing, an inherent theme of sarcasm or witty comedy could be rescued between mountains and mountains of words that increase the word count but serve little other purpose to the plot or character development.

I got some strong Captain Planet vibes from the diverse teenager POV that are sent (for no apparent reason, albeit maybe there are hint from book 1 I missed) to ancient Egypt. Yes, we have a time travel Sci-Fi story! And sadly, no. Awesome Egyptian cats don't seem to play a strong role, much to my chagrin.

I thought the idea of including a wheelchair user that needs to cross the desert I suppose to stop Adolf Hitler's evil plans to be cool. The problem is that we enter plot hole territory when the cast of good guys are not allowed to use modern inventions to cross the sandy desert. Okay, nobody has cellphones with GPS, that is a huge thumbs up for me. Buuuut, the wheelchair somehow survives. Not only is it intact and 100% functional, there's buttons with futuristic porta potty rooms and endless amounts of potable tap water that appear out of seemingly nowhere.

There might be some wheelchair using readers that will be thrilled to know their wheelchairs can cross the sandy desert with zero effort in this book. Given one of my closest relatives is a part time wheelchair user and I am the person that must push it (which is soooo hard to do!), I feel the story made things too easy. I would have sooooooooooo loved a story where everyone had to take turns pushing that wheelchair and gain a greater understanding of how disabled people yearn to enjoy fulfulling lives, but cities (especially in 3rd world countries like my own) are not designed to accomodate them. Just the simple thought of a story about pushing a wheelchair without the distracting Hitler subplot would have been very fulfilling.

The dialogue of the characters was also quite strange. Instead of seeing the huge challenge of pushing a wheelchair through uneven terrain to save the world, the characters stand there and talk about the oddest topics. They would say things like: "There is an obscure Roman Emperor from year such & such that wrote a treaty about the intricacies of circular geometry that run in accordance with the planetary movements of Venus."

Okay, so this exact line of text does not appear in the book, but I do wish to exemplify the sort of conversation about obscure world history facts that are shared amongst the heros instead of worrying about more pertaining concerns such as: how to push a wheelchair over uneven terrain in just a few hours to save the world.

This book is very similar to Cats of the Pyramids by Paul Nelson, only that the author of that book clearly states he isn't neurodivergent, but wanted to write a fantasy series for his autistic son. I think readers that loved that book are very likely to enjoy this series and viceversa.

In my opinion, the cover is great, hands down, the diversity is a thumbs up. With lots of editing and trimming of the obscure world history facts in favor of plot advancement, this book could be a good read. Still, I am glad to have given it the chance even though I struggled reading it. show less

You know how you feel when you are waiting for something or traveling on a common carrier and you end up overhearing a conversation? That is how this book seemed to me. The conversations between the characters was well done and realistic but it felt out of context to me, that I was only hearing this little bit of a bigger whole. It was interesting reading about some of the customs in China. I found the descriptions of food and daily life were intriguing. I did like the way the couple, show more Catherine and Chance, supported each other through good and bad. But alas, I felt I was missing something the whole time. show less

Okay, I tried, I really did. But this story is like ADHD personified. It jumped around so much that I had a hard time figuring out what was going on. It is almost like it was written for film or theater, where you could keep things straight because of different acts and the ability to see the change in background, etc.

Very detailed, but too much pop culture, history, different languages, etc. mashed together made it hard to follow. Since this is book 2, maybe it would have made more sense show more if I had read the first book before this one. I honestly don't know.

I appreciate the dictionary and references at the end, although I am not use to seeing references in a "fun read" type book.

I recieved this as a free copy in return for a voluntary review. show less