The Split Worlds #1 Between Two Thorns

Monday 27 May 2013

The Split Worlds #1 Between Two Thorns

Don't know how to put it in words but I didn't like it very much.... i was okay but it didn't hold my interest. Presenting The Split Worlds #1 Between Two Thorns by Emma Newman.

Here is the summary of the book:

Something is wrong in Aquae Sulis, Bath’s secret mirror city.

The new season is starting and the Master of Ceremonies is missing. Max, an Arbiter of the Split Worlds Treaty, is assigned with the task of finding him with no one to help but a dislocated soul and a mad sorcerer.

There is a witness but his memories have been bound by magical chains only the enemy can break. A rebellious woman trying to escape her family may prove to be the ally Max needs.

But can she be trusted? And why does she want to give up eternal youth and the life of privilege she’s been born into?

An okay book with an interesting premise. A clash of outlining a plot and the executing a plot. Newman's tale divides the world into two parts, the Fae world and the mundane world, Exilium and Mundanus. Pretty slick there. Using it to visualize the Fae world as a mirror one to our own. Again pretty slick. Creating Fae worlds who control the different immortal families as patrons. Prettty cool. Even the characters are pretty well made.

But all things considered, the one place Newman's tale downsizes, is balance. There is no visible balance between the elements of the book. How they coordinate and how they execute it all goes downhill over there. I have no quarrel with any point of the book but somehow it didn't have the appeal that I was expecting from the cover as well as the synopsis.

Each character plays its own role in this. Cathy, Lord Poppy, Maz, William.... they all play their part but in a way what they are doing doesn't go at all with the story. Even it felt like there was no distinction between the way the mundanes think and those of the immortals. Seriously I wanted to like this book...... its interesting enough..... but I just couldn't get into it.