i quite liked this. i liked the concept and the ideas and stuff. although i thought that maybe more time could have been spent on the plot with the ghosts and gods and stuff, and a bit less on the character stuff, which did get a bit repetitive to read, i thought the same stuff maybe could have been conveyed in less words, and more time could have been spent on the plot. i guess thats a characteristic of a lot of modern young adult, is that its a lot more character focussed than is common in a lot of other fantasy adventure books, including other young adult books and books for teenagers. its not really my favourite trend, but whatever, i guess the balance between them varies anyway. something i noticed was that although this book was definitely in the modern young adult style, the narrative voice wasn't as much as a lot of other books, thats actually why i started reading it, other than that it seemed interesting. i dont even know how exactly to describe how the voice compared to that of other books, and it isnt like its even a particularly important detail, but i just thought id point out that i noticed that. anyway, overall i thought the book was quite good.

not really my sort of book, but alright, basically the same as i thought of the first one. it was a bit repetitive and annoying at times and a lot of its focus didnt really interest me that much. i thought it could have been written better, especially the plot dtructure and pacing and what was given time, but it was still fairly fun and entertaining. although this review sounds more critical than my review of the last one, i didnt think it was any worse, maybe i even liked it slightly better, but mostly they were about the same, they both had fun and entertaining bits but could have been written better and also just didnt really appeal to me personally so much in some parts, with the first one with the romance, which i dont really mind but neither do i really care for, andd i found a bit tiresome, and with this one the constant repteeition of the idea that women are actually people who can do things, which really isnt revolutionary in the twenty first century, when the book was written, even if it was when the books set, and so does obviosuly have a place in it, andmaybe i just dont find it that interesting to read about because it doesnt involve me. like the last book, this one doesnt really feel that historically accurate, especially tonally (i dont even know what i mean here that much), and all the americanisms were quite jarring. (also what was with calling platts ship the english all the time? felicity is english too, it doesnt make sense, and it sounds like shes show more talking about the enemy in a war, but it wasnt even an official ship it was just a random science vessel. i mean like technically even felicitys ship would be more accurately described as the english since theyre sailing as privateers with a british liscence). another thing about this series is that although it is mostly historical, it does have some fantasy in it, even though i wouldnt really describe the genre as fantasy, aand i thought it was interesting that at the time that it was written, people probably didnt know enough about the world to know that alchemy and dragons didnt exist, so that distinction probably didnt exist then. show less

There is a lot of young adult stuff I don't enjoy (despite being part of that age group) but I liked this. It's young adult and follows and general conventions, but it is also an actual book written for actual people of which the target audience just happens to be teenagers rather than a book written to appeal to the stereotypical characteristics of teenagers. That's the best way I can think of to explain it, this doesn't really follow the typical tone or voice of young adult books and could probably be enjoyed by a general audience. There was romance which I don't really like, but it wasn't the focus and wasn't presented as a really important thing constantly obsessed over by the characters like in a lot of young adult (and adult) fiction it was just there so it didn't bother me.
I liked how the main character was the daughter of the Old Man of Coniston. It's quite common in these sorts of books for the protagonists to be the children of like the main deity, or a deity or something of something specific, but them being the child of a deity of a specific place isn't that common, I haven't seen that done before and I think it was interesting. That's also the mountain the one in Swallows and Amazons is based off, and I've really liked those books for years.
I think the fantasy element was done quite well, using English folklore and a family of booksellers that were connected with that. The characters and stuff were quite well done and likeable, although I think Vivien and show more Merlin could have been developed more. I liked how it was set in the 1980s not the present day, although that is fairly common.
I noticed there were a lot of references to things and also a lot of mentions of place names and a lot of description of clothes and stuff but it seemed more like a deliberate writing choice rather than bad writing and worked well in this. show less

I wish id read these books as a kid they were exactly the sort of thing i would have really liked. i still enjoyed them now but its different when youre a kid, books have a different impact on you, especially as thats the agegroup these books are aimed at. but anyway they were good, well written and interesting and engaging. and its nice to read books like this again, i prefer this sort of style of writing over the more 'modern (american usually) ya' sort which seems to be popular these days. not that thats bad, i just like this better

I'm not actually really sure why I decided to read this book, but maybe I shouldn't have, because it wasn't because I thought it was something I might like, since it isn't my sort of book at all. I was saw it in my librays ebook app and thought it would just be another one of those trashy insufferable ya romances that aren't really even worth reading and that I don't even like but are quick and entertaining (and I wasn't exacty wrong either). But I decided to read a bit of it anyway because I was bored (and procrastinating) and just out of curiosity, and because this sort of book doesn't take up much of my brain it's easy to read. I didn't even mean to read all of it but then I thought I might as well, because it started out entertaining and mildy funny and almost interesting, and I thought I just might as well finish it.
As for the actual review, it was engaging and quick and easy to read and relatively funny and in general I had fun reading it. It's alright for a bit of (very) light entertainment. And I did actually like some bits of it sort of. I thought it could have had potential. It was very cliched with loads of fantasy archetypes and tropes, with the idea of the generic fantasy quest and chosen one and so on, but that was obviously quite intentional. It was used for humour fairly effectively, and although the characters and world building and general ideas were very far from anything special, I did mostly like it. But the whole plot and ending was really show more disapointing. I didn't have high expectations, but I did at least expect a bit more than what there was. I'd thought the author would actually do something with all the generic archetypes and tropes used. I mean I assumed that was why they were there so much, was that there'd be something interesting done with them. But there was nothing, short of a few comments making light of the whole chosen one/quest trope, and the idea of what happens after a quest is finished, but even that didn't turn up anything interesting. And the whole romance plot was so predictable, I actually didn't see the point. Like how is that even a plot if the most predictabe thing possible happens at the end. I thought it might be made at least a bit more interesting. To be fair, I'm not interested in romance as a genre at all, so I am being a bit unfair, since the book does work well enough at being a romance/romcom with the idea of it being what happens after a generic fantasy quest, but still, I think more could have been done with the concept than just having things work out in the most predictabe way possible. And as for the actual romance, I'm really no judge of that, it isn't my thing at all, but I generally don't mind and can even sometimes enjoy romance as a subplot in a fantasy/adventure/etc novel, and the thought occurred to me, is it even actually a romance if both the characters already like each other before the book's even started? I mean I guess it is, but I thought the point of a romance plot was about characters getting to know each other and coming to like each other. I mean obviously I'm no judge, and obviously that isn't always the case, but personally, I just don't find this particularly interesting at all, even though I don't find most romance interesting, especially when too much of the book focusses on it, so I don't know, that might just be me. And the romance was also ridiculously unrealistic and clished. Another thing is that there wasn't any other actual plot. I'm aware that I just read what's probably best desribed as a romcom, even though it has fantasy in it, and that the plot is meant to be just romance, but still, again I found that disapointing because that's not what personally interests me.
And why does this say 'Arthurian' in the blurb? The only thing it has in common with Arthurian myths is being set in a medieval fantasy world with magic and quests and swords, but it doesn't draw on Arthurian myths at all remotely in the slightest. It doesn't really draw on anything much. Although some of it was fun to read and I liked the characters and their friendships well enough, it was all really underdeveloped and a bit bland. And I've already mentioned the ending, but I genuinely don't actually see the point in it ending like that.
Anyway, overall, it wans't exactly brilliant but I don't completely hate it, it was entertaining even though it wasn't good or the sort of thing I really like. show less

This was fun, and it was engaging and easy to read. It isn't completely my style of book, this sort of young adult isn't really my favourite, but I didn't think it was too bad, and that bits subjective anyway. In terms of how actually good I thought it was, it wasn't too bad, it's not a bad example of the type of book it's trying to be. I still think it wasn't done too well, the way it was written could have been better, in terms of prose and the way the plot fits together and events happen and that sort of stuff. And the author does fail at making it sound like the characters are really from upper class eighteenth century England, or even that they're any of those things indivually. I know the author's American, so I wouldn't really expect anything else, and also I guess it can be haard to get the balance right between appealing to modern readers and sounding historically accurate (and to be honest I don't really know how people talked then, but I can be pretty sure that they definitely wouldn't say a lot of the things people in this book said). Still even if the quality isn't brilliant, it works as a fun, sort of pseudo-historial novel for teenagers, it wasn't really bad or anything.

-I had stopped reading the Skulduggery Pleasant books for a while last year after the eighth, as they were too dark with too much gratuitous violence and not enough plot and interesting things
- I decided to try this one, and it was quite a bit better
-it seemed there was more plot and more interesting stuff happened and there was less violence for the sake of it, which got boring, it was also less depressing
-I liked Valkyrie trying to receive her sisters soul the best I think it was more varied
-Omen was also interesting, so was the school
- the characters all seem more realistic in this, although not completely so they seem a lot more like actual people,
-they don't completely, but that it the style, it is meant to be like that
-the effect of everything on Valkyrie was shown well
-a lot of things for example representation and diversity in these books often seem done half good and half bad
-there are also often other dubious things
-I enjoyed this book enough that I am intereresred in reading more of the others

i liked how funny and witty this was, and i thought the idea was interesting, with christian mythology being real (that makes it sound like its a similar sort of thing to percy jackson) and the and main characters being an angel, a demon, the descendent of a witchfinder, the descendent of a witch, and the son of the devil whos also an eleven year old kid. i liked the story and the characters. im pretty sure there was a dalek in it somewhere but i could be wrong. the tv show was also good.
a year or so later ive read it a second time, its still jolly good.

I watched the TV show of this first, and I actually rather enjoyed that, despite it being the sort of YA that I don't much like, although the TV show is actually a lot less like that, and I liked the world building and fantasy adventure aspect and generally I thought it was actually pretty good.
The TV show was definitely rather better than the book, anyway. I did mostly enjoy reading it, because it was short and easy to read and mostly fairly entertaining, and I enjoyed the fantasy adventure aspects and still found the world building relatively interesting, although it was done better in the television show (and even then it isn't brilliant or anything, partly it was just that it looked good on the television). The TV show was also improved by the characters who are from Six of Crows, I think.
This was largely the typical modern/2010s American YA novel, which isn't particularly my thing (but I will say is easy to read which I appreciate at the moment I can't be bothered to read much more complex stuff). I also thought it could have been written better (although it was this author's first novel). The characters weren't very well developed and I didn't really like them that much I was mostly indifferent, and the actual writing or prose was clumsy and the plot was a bit simple. I think the TV show improved on this with the characters (although that's maybe just because they work better played by actors) and tidied up the plot (and added stuff) and I think it worked better show more visually and I liked the way they did that better.
Overall the book was sort of mediocre (I'm only giving it five stars because I decided I don't like using a numerical rating system, I can't describe my opinion of a book with a number and I don't really like to, and now I only rate books lower if I absolutely hate them. books would have a different rating based on different criteria, and since I read for entertainment now not education a rating based on how enjoyable it was or how much I liked it would be more relevant to my experience but also sort of sort of defeats the point of rating them, generally a rating would be meaningless). show less

although it took me a few months after I got this out of the library to read it, I did enjoy it. it's slower paced or something like that, which made it harder for me get into it properly, and the style is a bit more old fashioned than what i've been reading recently, but I do like that sort of style and tone, really. I guess sort of like high fantasy, and also sort of told in a simple tone. This was published around 1990 i think, and theres more focus on plot and stuff i think. it was sort of the typical sort of plot and world for this type of fantasy book, but i havent really read anything like this for ages, and i think it was still good, i dont think that makes it any worse. it was structured to follow both siblings and also had many different other characters and locations.

I'd already seen both tv shows on this before reading the book, although I usually do it the other way around. I enjoyed both shows and the book, although they're all quite different. this has the same sort of humour as the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, although this possibly has a bit more emotional weight or something along those lines. i liked the characters, and i think dirk gently is actually quite a relatable character in some ways, maybe. this was fairly philosophical possibly, and it had a strange theme or motif or symbol or something of telephones, although im not quite sure what it was trying to say about them. it was funny and interesting and i enjoyed it as much as the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy books, if not more. I didn't fully understand all the references but i think i understood most of the plot, at least in general terms. this also seems to have elements similar to the doctor who story city of death which was also written by adams, and this even has an long lived time-traveller in it

this was really interesting to read. at the start it had a lot of comments about how toxic fandom can be, which ive seen a bit of on the internet. then there was all the mystery and the murder stuff and i had no idea where that was going even though i probably should have. the plot and characters were really complex, i found gottie especially interesting around her morality and how unreliable she was. her apparent motives changed a lot through the book, and the ending especially showed her quite different from the start even though she hadnt really changed that much.

At first sight this book looked interesting. It has an interesting cover with Norse runes and seemed promising of an adventure and mystery story related to Norse mythology. The idea behind the story was even slightly interesting.
But instead it's the typical young adult romance novel with a bit of fantasy that tries to sell itself as fantasy and adventure. As per its type, it has a weak female protagonist who is too emotional and complains too much and narrates in first person, the male love interest who the main character has a crush on, is attractive and mysterious, and has no character depth. The two characters meet and have to fix some minor problem or issue that usually isn't particularly interesting or well developed and fall in love. There is some angst and the protagonist complaining. The protagonist is weak and must be saved by the male character who is so much stronger. They figure everything out that wasn't particularly difficult in the first place and the protagonist learns about the mysteries of the love interest and they end up together. Usually set in modern America by an American author.
There was too much about the protagonist's feelings and family and romance and not enough about the magic. What there was wasn't even well done. It barely even touched on Norse mythology, and what was there was painfully inaccurate and ridiculous. Hel, the goddess (actually she wasn't a goddess but that's not the point) of the Norse underworld, Hel, place of the dishonoured show more dead, who is half beautiful woman and half rotting corpse, was an attractive man. This really stood out to me. I just don't understand why someone would make an interesting character so boring.
I can't really remember the details, but from what I remember there wasn't much more mythology than that. There were some warriors from another world that wanted to destroy the earth. They just wanted another home, because their world had been destroyed, and the main character collapsed their world on them, killing them all. It was actually mentioned in the book, and the reader was positioned to sympathise with them at least partially.
There was not much action and no fighting. The characters were mostly bland and stereotypical, although there were some interesting details about them. The idea was slightly original and could have been alright if done a lot better, but the way it was done made it seem unoriginal and obscured by teenage romance and emotions.
I've been wanting to rant about this book since I read it, a year ago. I can't remember all the details, so I'm sorry if any of this is accurate. show less

I’d give this book five stars for enjoyment but three for how good a book it was.
Parts of this book are the usual fantasy tropes. Will is an orphan who is bullied and isn’t as strong as the other orphans who is then taken in by a mentor and finds he is good at something. He then has to help defeat an evil baron who wants to invade the country and uses magically enslaved beasts. He shows he is a hero and is offered the chance to become a knight but refuses.
But the rest is well done and original. Apart from Morgarath’s beasts, and in later books the Ranger’s ability to communicate with their horses, there is no magic. The world is based on medieval England, and although some details have been changed is fairly similar. In this world there are Rangers in the employ of the king who are extremely proficient in archery, knife throwing, unseen movement. The author goes into detail about the weapons, training and battles and this is mostly very well done. It is well researched and not boring. The conflicts are well done and interesting. Halt is an interesting and well developed character. The other characters are decent.
After the second book the series improves. The are none of the stereotypical fantasy tropes and the focus is more on the battles. The series is set over a number of years and most of the books are individual or two books in a short period of time. Some of the books are set in different countries. The characters all undergo good character development. A show more lot of the characters and the way people of different countries are portrayed is stereotypical. The author breaks stereotypes but shows them in the first place in an exaggerated way as the norm then creates one character that defies them. The author also seems to forget some details from earlier books. There is some romance but not too much that happens later in the series. The descriptions of the battles might be considered violent but probably isn’t too bad.
Overall it’s a good series that improves in later books. It is worth reading if you are interested in medieval warfare and the like but might be boring otherwise. show less

i thought the world and magic and stuff was interesting and i liked the characters and found them interesting. i liked the friendship between the four main characters. i found it a bit slow some of the time but it was mostly pretty good.

This is pretty much the usual unexceptional dystopian young adult book. Character (usually a teenage girl) lives in a limited world and controlling and doesn’t know the outside world exists. She discovers something which leads her to question everything she’s been taught and with the help of a teenage boy (or two) goes on to discover that there’s more to the world than she knew.
The plot is reasonably compelling towards the end, but mostly due to the curiosity factor. The characters aren’t anything special. The world is reasonably original, but the world building isn’t particularly compelling, and the ideas aren’t original at all. It was set in Australia, which is slightly more unusual than America but doesn’t really make it any better. The themes weren’t anything special. There was no politics and not much end of the world themes. There was pretty much no action and not much conflict.
I didn’t enjoy it, but I don’t like this sort of book. People who like young adult dystopian might enjoy it.

I read this book without having read the other books in the series. I didn't finish it. I really didn't like it. I'm not sure exactly what I hated about it, but I'll try to explain.
It was overly long with very little happening.
There was too much bad description. I usually like description, but only when it's done well, and this wasn't.
The characters were boring. They were the usual cliche fantasy characters and they weren't even written well. I hated the portrayal of female characters. The author tried to make them strong, but failed.
The world building was bad and unoriginal. It was the usual high fantasy world with magic, elves, dwarves and dragons. I don't mind if it's presented well, but this wasn't.
I didn't like the tone or the writing style. For me this is important. It's partly a combination of the other things, but for this book I think it needs its own point. It was flat and boring and for some reason just annoyed me.
This book had nothing interesting or relatable for me. Nothing caught my interest or struck me as particularly original. It was poorly executed and it bored me. Reading this actually made me feel really bad and ruined the Lord of the Rings and most high fantasy for me for a few months.

This was good, it sounded like fun and there were multiple Swallows and Amazons references. i dont usually like nonfiction of any form and have trouble actually reading it, even when i want to, but i really enjoyed this. i think it technically is nonfiction since its travel writing or a memoir or whatever but it still reads like a novel (it still is a novel i think). i found it actually pretty interesting, with him sailing a mirror dinghy (thats what i sail sometimes), and all the places he went and the stuff that happened to him were interesting. i like the writing style, and thought it was quite funny and relatable or something like that.

had terrible world building in terms of geography and culture and stuff, it didn't seem like the author put any effort into that at all, it seemed to use archetypes mostly. i didn't like the style much, but then this really isn't my type of book. i didn't like most of the characters or characterisations that much, including the personification of the ocean, although i thought how they were mostly morally grey was sort of interesting but i didnt like the execution too much. i did find it fairly entertaining and relatively engaging, and i mostly didnt like it because this style of book isnt one i really like (the style being the modern idea of young adult). i definitely regret buying it new, especially since i basically never do that, and i only did this time a year and a half ago because i had money and was at a book shop and i hadnt bought any books for ages and it had a cool looking covr with a ship on it. i only got around to reading it a few months ago, and i thought some of the ideas in it seemed interesting but im not sure of how well it was done.
i think it could have been good if it was done differently, i liked most of the ideas but not the way they were done

this was a cool idea, i liked the setting an imagery and the world building. i actually thought those evolved people (i cant remember what they were called) were pretty terrifying and i like that idea. this world was sort of very bleak and depressing but not in a way thats bleak and depressing to read about, its a fun thing to read about how bleak and depressing it is

this is probably my favourite series by this author, i like magnus best as a protagonist and find him sort of more relatable or something, and i find norse mythology interesting, and i liked the conflicts and stuff of this series more than the authors other ones, although i enjoyed them too. although a lot of the humour for these books relies on references to american pop culture which i dont get and even if i did i probably wouldnt find that funny, since its mostly the same joke of this ancient powerful god likes this modern thing, although actually that joke can be funny, i still found these books were reasonably funny anyway

i read the rest of these when i was eleven but i couldnt find this one, ntil recently when i reread the whole series. they were and still are one of my favourite series, and i still find them enjoyable even though im older than the target audience now. i like the writing style and the characters and the world building and all the random funny comments.

-obviously a response to Harry Potter
-Harry Potter is still a lot better even if Rowling is a bad person she is still a better writer
-this author seems to mostly write contemporary and is not great at fantasy or adventure, although I have not read her other books
-the world boring is not very good in general or compared to Harry Potter
-as written in response to Harry Potter it does raise a few things I agree with or at least are good points and an interesting response but a lot if it is not
-it does have some good themes but some of it was confused, it could have been done better
-it is meant to have more diversity but there is only one person of colour and two gay or bi people in the major characters, which if the time period is taken into consideration actually is not much better than Harry Potter other than the author not being a bad person and obviously it is still better
-a lot of the characters are clearly based on Harry Potter characters but it does not seem to have anything interesting to say on them
-Simon is just boring and not done very well
-Penny is a combination of Ron and Hermione and is one of the few characters I really like so far but not much has been done with her
-I am not sure who Agatha is meant to be based on, if anyone maybe the authors idea of Ginny or possibly Ron but is not really like either and so far seems a useless character whose purpose is to be disliked and useless, I really don't like this sort of character. She improved a bit but I think she show more could have been treated better
-Ebb had potential but is not done very well.
-Baz is based on those weird fans idea of Malfoy and could possibly have been an interesting character if not for that, and his character doesn't really go anyway
-the fact that he bullied Simon for years was not resolved and it did seem to be somewhat onevsided
-with the idea that obsession and rivalry means romance which is sort of annoying
-and is like a Harry Potter slash fan fiction written as a book with the facade of being a more diverse and better written Harry Potter
-I think Simon and Bazs relationship could have been interesting if it had been more about them becoming friends and resolving their differences rather than just being attracted to each other
-I liked simon and Penny's friendship and how they moved in together at the end as friends
-simon didn't appreciate Agatha at all, it seemed like he was being really self absorbed with that, in general he didn't appreciate his friends enough
-the magic system is just stupid using popular songs as spells. It could have something but is underdeveloped
-at least they didn't call vampires vegetarians just because they weren't cannibals but they still weren't very interesting, neither were the other magical creatures
-it is not even funny,
-the style and voice reminds me a bit of Percy Jackson
-I don't like it, Percy Jackson was better even though that wasn't my favourite part of those books
-it is meant to be set in the UK but the style and voice is really American
-the point of view is done badly, it uses first person but tries to do multiple different characters and one main character
-typical to being young adult it has short sentences creating a very young adult seeming voice and tone
-this is young adult and follows those generic conventions
-the different spelling of magic is offensive to Septimus Heap because this is so bad
-nevertheless it was entertaining
-the plot was actually decent
-it was interesting, especially the mystery of what was happening and I liked the bits with Simon, Baz and Penny working together trying to solve it
-although there could have been more plot and less of the other unessecary and boring stuff
-I didn't like how some things were phrased, it seemed weird
-I don't know whether to give this two or three stars show less

i enjoyed this, it was easy to read and engaging and fun. it wasnt really what i expected, it was more character driven i think, and focused more on elinor, who was different to what i expeted, but i liked her character. but i cant actually remember what i expected, i meant to read it when it came out last year but didnt get around to it until a few weeks ago or whenever it was that i read it. i havent read any books from this series for two or three years until this one, but i have been meaning to reread the rest on them and maybe i will sometime soon because im fairly sure this is one of my favourite series

this book does well at describing what it is to be a young child who's alone and gets a lot of their life from books, it reminded me of being that age, and it really gets the right sort of voice, i think. and this tied in with the fantasy elements well, i liked how that was done. overall i liked the general feel and themes of the book, i thought it read well, and i liked the ideas behind it.

this was fun, i read it at school when i was meant to be studying. it was funny and i liked all the different bits that sort of connected to the main story and the jokes and observations about random stuff, and it also had an actual story which was also interesting, these are funny and not at all serious books but they do seem to be quite clever and have some serious sort of things to say in terms of themes, and they're possibly also philosophical or something like that, but i really have no idea

-interesting world and magic system
-interesting how all the characters more or less were of dubious morality, including both main characters in different ways
-unreliable narration
-different sorts of point of view were used
-corrupt politicians who are magicians but power comes from demons they summon
-interesting conflicts between magicians and 'commoners' and magicians and demons, has some serious themes here
-it did leave some gaps and things i thought could have been done better but overall quite good
-a lot of politics for a kids book and morally dubious characters arent too common in this sort of book, but it definitely is a kids book not young adult and im sure kids can understand that sort of stuff, i didnt think it was generally more challenging than most kids books
- was slightly dense to read in its style but not that much i suspect im just not used to reading anymore

modern style young adult isnt really my usual preferred style, but i enjoyed this. the concept, what with ghosts who live in a building and can't leave, at first i thought it would be a bit like the tv show ghosts (which i liked), but this was quite different, (obviously, since its a novel with a central conflict and plot and stuff not a comedy tv show). the world building with the ghosts and how they worked was interesting, as well as the general concepts, and i liked slowly figuring out more about what was really happening as more was revealed as the story unfolded. harriets character and the stuff with her grandmother and that whole family was interesting, and i liked the other ghosts as well. the concept seemed quite unique, or at least i dont think ive read another book much like this one
I read like 250 pages of this today i think, although i do generally find that the modern young adult style is a lot quicker and easier to read than even stuff like fantasy books for kids/teenagers which is something closer to what i read more often.

this had a cool premise and i liked how it showed the main character at different stages growing up and the different conflicts and elements of the world which were shown in those chapters. the boy raised by ghosts was an interesting idea as were other characters and elements. i liked the sleer and old burial in the hill. i do think that a lot of things could have been expanded on, there was definitely more potential for a lot of the stuff, but i guess it is a kids book and not everything has to be covered fully. i also thought the ending was a bit brief and underdeveloped and i didnt really see what role scarlet had, i thought she could have done more, but then again this was a kids book. still, i think it could have been longer but overall i enjoyed it and liked the ideas and the writing style

i know this isnt a proper novel its a star trek tie in, but that doesnt excuse it from being utterly terrible (theres no way this would have been published otherwise, i expect they just wanted lots of star trek novels and didnt care if they were rubbish). one thing i can say of it is that is was fairly entertaining to read, and had an interesting concept, but it was executed terribly.
the plot of the romulans altering time and the enterprise crews lived being changed too was decent, if not particularly original (it was quite similar to the basic plot of an average star trek episode, but you cant really blame it for that). however it didnt make much sense in a lot of places, and could have been written better, some parts were undeveloped and some parts were overly repetitive. there was too much time spent on repetitive character passages, and not enough on developing the plot.
and as for the characters, they were even worse than the plot, which at least had something going for it. the actual characters from star trek were almost unrecognisable, they didnt behave at all like the characters on the tv show did, and there was only really focus on the two or three main ones (i know most of the episodes are like that so i cant really blame the book for that though). the characters that were made up for this book for unoriginal cliches, although i though the enterprise crew members were alright actually, but the romulans were terrible, the romulan emperor was actually a captain in show more one of the star trek episodes, and her characterisation in this book wasnt really too inconsistent with that, but it also didnt bring anything original.
a large part of the plot of this book was concerned with the characters being in different roles than usual and the problems therein, and the author barely even understood the characters in the first place, so it ended up being largely ineffective. i wasnt sure what was going on with the romulan commander, she started off as cliched but with potential, but then her character got more or less dropped in favour of the emperor. the character interactions were also way off, the actual characters would never act that way and it was actually quite weird at times, and completely out of character.
another thing was the actual writing, as well as the characterisation and plot, the prose was perhaps the worst i remember reading in a novel. it was extremely repetitive and often flat and cliched, and the sentence structure especially was really annoying to read, with the same basic structure being repeated over and over again. i basically never even notice this sort of thing so it must have been bad. and although i think its pointless to go on about consistency too much, the author got mind melds completely wrong, they never worked like that in the show and it stood out as annoying, and it didnt even serve the plot or a good purpose.
overall, this novel reads like it was written by a teenager, (or someone whos had no experience writing and is writing their first book as a media tie in because thats easier since the works half done already with the characters and setting and concept and tone already existing). if that had been the case it might have showed some potential, but since as far as i know it wasnt, its just an extremely badly written but sometimes entertaining novel with some interesting ideas and a lot of rubbish. as a star trek novel, meh, as a proper book, one of the worst ive ever read. show less