2024 Reading Challenge

2024 Reading Challenge
Jill Elizabeth has read 1 book toward her goal of 285 books.
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2023 Reading Challenge

2023 Reading Challenge
Jill Elizabeth has read 5 books toward her goal of 265 books.
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Book Review: Sunborn Rising by Aaron Safronoff

Sunborn risingThis is going to be a little different than my usual reviews, largely because Sunborn Rising is a book I did not finish… Generally speaking, if I can’t get into the book enough to keep reading, I decline to review it. I am contacted by surprising number of authors and publishers and publicists; most of my book review books come to me unsolicited, generally by new(er) authors. Some of these don’t offer sample content. But even when there is a sample available, and the book comes from a known entity, I always caveat book reviews. There are many fine books and many fine readers, not all of one category overlap with the other… If for any reason a book doesn’t resonate with me sufficiently to allow me to finish it and write a proper review, I let the author/publisher/publicist know and respectfully decline to review it. That doesn’t mean I will only review a book if I can give it a glowing review (which you will learn shortly). What it means is that if I can’t get into the story because the book and my reading tastes don’t mesh, I don’t think it’s fair to review it. If it’s poorly written or there are major issues, I may still do a review – this rarely happens, but it has on occasion and I think that is valuable feedback both for authors and other readers, so do occasionally feel compelled to give it. What usually happens when I decline to see a review through is that the book in question is perfectly fine, simply not for me. Therefore I won’t try writing a review because I don’t feel I can do so objectively. The failure to grab me personally doesn’t mean a book is somehow deficient, it just means it didn’t grab me at this particular time, for whatever reason.

Well, the reason for that long-winded intro is (finally) about to make sense. This is one of those books, and I almost didn’t do a review as a result. But after talking it through with my delightful contact from Neoglyphic Entertainment (who contacted me about the review), I/we decided to review it anyway.

I was contacted and asked to do a review in the usual manner, and after looking at the book description on Amazon, decided on hard copy rather than an ebook, largely because of the illustrations (I read ebooks on a kindle paperwhite, which I love, but which is black and white). I gave my standard caveat about reviews, and received the book. My goodness, but it was lovely! The cover is a lush teaser of an image (as you can see), and there are illustrations EVERYWHERE inside – which is very unusual for anything not marketed as a children’s picture book. I was looking forward to digging in, but had a few books in the queue ahead of it, so it took a little time. Finally, I was able to get to it – I opened it with such excitement, then…. Nothing.

I tried a couple of times, unwilling to believe something so beautiful couldn’t grab me. But despite my best attempts, I could simply not get into the story. I want to so badly – it is a GORGEOUS book, it really is, the artwork is absolutely incredible. It reminds me of the best children’s picture books – Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, the Rackham Alice in Wonderland, the Oliver Jeffers’ books. The illustrations are complex and lush and absolutely stunning – to see them throughout a non-children’s book was a delight. I really can’t believe more books don’t take this path, particularly in this genre (fantasy)… I went through the book repeatedly, checking out each illustration, trying again and again to get into the story – but for some reason the story just couldn’t holding me.

Dilemma. As I’ve stated, normally I don’t do reviews if I cannot finish the book. But this book was so lovely and the illustrations throughout such a great direction for stories that I wanted to make sure it got its due for that… It would be a marvelous trend to see more carryover of the lushness of children’s illustrated books into older audiences’ more complex writing/stories. And I wanted to rave about the particular artwork in here – it really is lovely (I feel like I’m repeating myself, adjective-wise, but they really are the best words for this one). But to do that, and not be disingenuous, I knew I’d have to talk about the difficulties I had with the story and I didn’t want to short-shrift the book and have anyone discount it out of hand…

As I said, dilemma.

But then, after talking with Jacklyn at Neoglyphic, I realized that my enthusiasm for the artwork was likely to be strong enough to at least spark interest in anyone likely to give the book a chance. And so here we are. If you like fantasy as a genre: stories about alternate worlds, full of novel new creatures and strange powers both personified and in nature, then this is definitely worth a look. And if you find yourself lost in it, as I wanted to be, tell me what did it and whether I should try, yet again, to push through. I love being convinced that I was wrong about books…

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