Jes Battis

I'm on a Paranormal CSI kick lately--this is the second of 3 in my library stack. I'm going to rate this slightly below the Hannah Jayne one, but still quality. There's a lot of mini-infodumps in the story, which isn't a bad thing--they're all about forensics, largely, so it's interesting and relevant, even while being a bit of an aside, but they're not all in the right places. A comment about looking at someone through an SEM is more useful *after* it's mentioned that SEM is scanning electron microscope, as is explained on the next page. Still, it was decent overall.… (more)

Don't read this review. Seriously. You have been warned. I wrote it because I needed it off my chest pronto.

I started the book without refreshing myself with the description and immediately thought I had bought a fantasy book set in a purely fantasy world, which is fine, only not. There are literally no world building descriptions. None. At the 5% mark I started highlighting words I had never seen before or that were only vaguely familiar (and I assumed Latin/Roman) just to give myself something to do. No description is ever given, you’re just told “look a meretrix is here”. One hundred pages down the line I was pretty sure a meretrix was a prostitute, sort of, maybe, but I still wasn’t 100% sure and I was so distracted trying to juggle new words and guess/memorize their meanings that half the time I didn’t remember which character was what and whether I should even trust that character. The book is written in third person omniscient, so you get everyone’s thoughts but none of them feel the need to give you any explanation at all. I highlighted 45 words which are either completely made up (sagitarri are archers, because ya’know, we can’t call them archers and we can’t give a description, you have to figure it out yourself), or Latin/Roman and therefore not found in my kindle dictionary and only the fact that I know way more about ancient Rome than I should even made me realize I should actually google some of these words and confirm my guesses.

So, I finally settled in to putting up with words I didn’t know and suddenly wham, bam, no more weird Roman words. Fun fact: the first portion is all in the alternate world, with no mention of the world our characters come from. It’s as though it doesn’t exist at all. You learn much later in the book (or rather figure out for yourself) that the characters don’t remember the world they come from, hardly at all. So, imagine my shock when suddenly some girl name Shelby and some boy named Andrew were having a conversation. My note in my kindle at this point reads “wtf. who is this Shelby bitch. wtf.” Let’s point out too that the characters in our imaginary world beyond the park and our characters living in our world have separate names that are not at all alike so it takes another 100 pages to be 100% sure who everyone is, and I admittedly repeatedly forgot because my brain just refused to be that convoluted.

At this point I thought “oh good, these characters will think back on the other world and I’ll learn something.” Screw that – no such luck sucker! You see, you can’t talk about that alternate world, it’s against the rules. Who decides these rules, teaches these rules and enforces these rules? You stupid fool, did you think anyone was going to give you any background other than that which you stumble over? Silly, foolish mortal. You’re not good enough for that.
So, now there are two sets of rules, neither one of which seems to actually be enforced or followed. No “parking” which means no talking about the park in the normal world – except everyone does, just not in a way that’s useful to you. No staying in the alternate universe (AU) through the night, except they always seem to be there at night and wake up at home in the morning….

My favorite part? (
The beginning drags in part because it’s basically a language and a culture lesson with absolutely no rule book around to help you. I LMAO when I realized there was a pronunciation guide but nothing like a dictionary. Because what I really need is to know how to pronounce words I will never say out loud, and not to know what they actually mean. I checked 3 times in the first 5% of the book trying to figure out where book 1 is because I could not believe the authors just dumped you into this world with absolutely no explanations whatsoever. Spoiler alert – this is it. This is book one. This is all the author thinks you need to know. Have fun ferretting the rest out in some perverse treasure hunt.

Positives: One little thing I did like is that it’s not just our characters who cross into this world, others do too. Sometimes something comes across from the AU too (whatever a silenus is – sounds bad, no description, don’t get it, whatever). So, while our characters are special in that they are on a particularly grand quest they are not the only fluffy, brilliants who know this world. The Lares were fun too, because if I was going to be anything in this world I would want to be an Auditore and speak to Lares. Did that sentence make any sense to you? Don’t worry, the authors will never explain, you’ll have to divine what I meant by doing intense context reading. By the 30% mark you’ll understand most of the major terminology but right until the end I was finding new words I had no frame of reference for and cursing wildly.

By the end, I enjoyed it, when the action finally picked up, I was finally able to tell the characters apart (I think, except the author kept adding new ones, with new names and gah…) and I had at least a rough guess at most of the terminology. I would probably read the next book, as long as the price stayed roughly the same (I am not paying more than I already did to survive the first book) and as long as there are no other more pressing books (which would be difficult, as nearly all books look better at this point). If you make it to the end the author manages a cliff hanger of sorts which I would actually like to see get resolved. Or I’ll lick an electrical socket and hopefully the short term memory loss will erase this book from my thoughts.

I unfortunately can’t recommend, this book without knowing you’re reading scores from standardized tests, and your level of education. If you aced every reading context test ever and love reliving those days, and are looking at receiving at least a master’s degree this book may be entertaining, worth your time and relevant to your life style. If you are a purely soft core pleasure reader, who hates having to pull a dictionary out every 15 minutes or dragging your knowledge of ancient Roman terminology out from the depths of your cerebrum and have no desire to imagine what it feels like to have your life taken up by grading papers and undergrads who really don’t care about iambic pentameter this book is probably going to suck for you. I’m not saying there aren’t enjoyable parts for everyone but for a lot of it you have to use the equivalent of a mental jack hammer to get down to the diamonds.

I realize this is a giant, rambling, grammatically-incorrect and terrifyingly bitter diatribe but that’s how far reduced my brain is after reading this book. Really this book is a 2 star, but I’ve bumped it mentally to 2.5 because the end is semi fun and I honestly can’t stand that I read this long a book only to give it 2 stars.

My list of words I took the time to highlight. Please be aware, this isn't all of them, it's just the ones I was either especially annoyed by or repeatedly annoyed by. Yes, some of these words I did know but there use was so irritating/pointless it was like nails on a chalkboard

Words: carcer, sharbah, vici, meretrix, gens, fibula, basilissa, lares, aedile, lupanaria, clepsydra, Auditores, spadone, morpheme, lupo, caupona, lyceum, tabularia, nemo, fricatives, silenus/silenoi, popinae, cloaca, basia, Arx, scale loricae, acedrex, xamat, hortus, impluvium, triclinium, arquites, oecus, clerestory, chlamys, halberds, miles, stola, cinna, nemones, hypocaust, latrinculi, aegis, arras, Sagittarius

Also, a few choice notes from my kindle:
where am i. who are u. wtf.
i cant tell if shelby is a who or a what
wtf. i thought this meant eunach
i am continually left feeling like i missed something even page to page
now there are obscure cree words
"Then _________ felt him die" - am i to assume die means climax. you can say cock and not climax. wtf


I believe those sum up my journey as I staggered through this book.… (more)