(as always, clicking on the cover will take you to Goodreads) | Title: The Labyrinth Wall Author: Emilyann Girdner Published on: November 9th 2013 Genre: Dystopian Fantasy (YA) Author's blog Part of a series?: Obsidian #1 Get a copy: Amazon I Barnes & Noble |
A review copy of The Labyrinth Wall was kindly provided via email to read and review. My review is written in my honest opinion and is uninfluenced by anyone.
Araina’s isolated teenage life is forever altered when she witnesses a man emerge through a rippling wall into the dark labyrinth she calls home. As a result of the stranger’s arrival, Araina’s Creators have unleashed a series of magical attacks using the labyrinth against its inhabitants. Now Araina must decide if she will trust potentially deceitful allies in order to reach safety on the other side of the labyrinth wall.
Whewwww. It's another one of those books which I'm happy to have finally finished. In other words, this book didn't work out for me as well as I thought it should've based on the predominant amount of 4 to 5-star ratings on Goodreads. What reduced this book to 2.5 stars were, hands down, the cardboard characters in the story.
If you click along to my review policy and/or review rating system, you'd see I've stated that stories with cardboard characters will often bring me to give a two-star rating. For me, the most important and vital part in a story is the characters. They are what encourages and enables us to imagine the story vividly in our minds. Without them, a story will be just meh. Characters that don't have any development to them will be just as good as a story without characters.
That was how The Labyrinth Wall felt to me. Characters that only felt like they were there for the story.
That was how The Labyrinth Wall felt to me. Characters that only felt like they were there for the story.
I love fantasy more than the girl next door does. The feeling whenever I get sucked into a wondrous new concept never fails to amaze me every time, yet it saddens me when I read a fantasy book and it feels like the book is labeled 'fantasy' only for the different world that it is set in. A fantasy story is more than just that. The characters and the development they go through, along with how the author shapes the world imaginatively through word usage, in my opinion, will make a good fantasy read.
The Labyrinth Wall had good potential to become a 4-5 star read as it promised a different concept -the characters lived inside the labyrinth and had to serve the Creators as a Mahk. The only thing Araina can do as a Mahk is to hunt for obsidian and pay for her taxes while avoiding being killed by other Mahk, thus leading to her avoidance and distrust of them. She gradually finds, however, that not all Mahk are who she thought them to be when she embarks on a dangerous trip to find the other side of the wall.
At most times I had trouble connecting with the story and characters, and because of that I dragged through most of the book, getting bored at the conversations and new discoveries. The premise of this book was okay, not what I would've hurt people to get my hands on, but it promised a fresh world and story. However, for the most part, I could only fathom out parts of what was going on in the story. Maybe it was my disinterest in the story as I just couldn't get into the world that Emilyann has built, even though I tried to.
At most times I had trouble connecting with the story and characters, and because of that I dragged through most of the book, getting bored at the conversations and new discoveries. The premise of this book was okay, not what I would've hurt people to get my hands on, but it promised a fresh world and story. However, for the most part, I could only fathom out parts of what was going on in the story. Maybe it was my disinterest in the story as I just couldn't get into the world that Emilyann has built, even though I tried to.
The greatest put-me-down in the story were the characters, like I said earlier. The only response elicited from me whenever Araina thought or spoke was the feeling that I wanted to punch her. Her actions were so....irritable. I understood when she said she would leave the team once she got to the other side of the labyrinth wall, but I was not given enough information through the form of her thoughts or actions that she would actually feel sorry for wanting to abandon the group. I don't think the author put much work into the development of Araina or any other of the characters, for this matter. Maybe I would've liked Korun, a secondary character in The Labyrinth Wall, better had he not been so predictable. For the rest of the characters, most of them I didn't remember much of due to the drab conversations. What I could gather was that there were more info-dumping than I would've liked, and even when Araina got all deep down and personal in her thoughts, she was too artificial. I don't mean that in a bad way. I like it when characters have bad traits in them as their character development would be more interesting that way. It's also important for a character to not be all perfect, but here's the thing with Araina: I wanted to feel her character development but what I got was a sudden change of heart and not a gradual transformation. She would deny in her opinions that she didn't like being in a group at all, but at the end of the story she'd changed her mind without any hint that she was going to. That was what I hated the most.
The relationships forged in The Labyrinth Wall didn't help either. Most of them were too bland with the exception of one -I particularly liked how the group of Mahk that Araina discovered later in the story, banded together. They were what brought life into this otherwise monotonous story, as I could understand their closeness to each other.
The relationships forged in The Labyrinth Wall didn't help either. Most of them were too bland with the exception of one -I particularly liked how the group of Mahk that Araina discovered later in the story, banded together. They were what brought life into this otherwise monotonous story, as I could understand their closeness to each other.
So all in all, I could say that it was a pretty decent story, dragged down only by badly-developed characters and maybe the overuse of the word, 'fairly'. Seriously. I can't even count the number of times that word was used in the story. Ack.
- Readers who are looking for a different plot or concept in a story, which this book has potential to offer.
- Readers who have an interest in stories that include adventures in a labyrinth.