Acorna

I read this as part of a big cleaning out of the many books I've purchased since my teen years, but never actually read. I expected it to be an earnest story about a unicorn girl (named Acorna nonetheless) and as such possibly humorously bad. One mark in its favor is that there was a very definite wry tone to the narrative, so most silliness seems intentional. But that's pretty much the only mark in its favor.

Sadly, this book is just...bad. It's badly written and badly structured, with constant POV changes, often from one paragraph to the next, a plodding pace, and a complete lack of rising action or climax.

It's as if the authors forgot that in a book things not only need to happen, but need to happen in a way that's interesting and engaging. Instead, the characters (all quite shallow) just sort of wander about and do stuff with little to no competent resistance or drama. There's never any suspense or sense of danger despite the fact that the characters are ostensibly attempting very dangerous things. Every antagonist either turns out to mean them no harm and becomes a massively powerful ally or is instantly and easily dispatched by aforementioned massively powerful allies. So, instead of anything remotely entertaining you're basically just reading a dull account of how some dudes easily accomplished a thing.

This is the part where I would usually complain about the relationships, but there's not much to complain about. There are a couple of people who appear to vaguely like each other and in the end maybe move in together or get married or something with no actual development leading into this. There are a couple of other people who like each other in an even more vague manner than the previous couple, one of whom suddenly confronts the other about it 3/4 of the way through the book. They proceed to have a brief conversation in which no conclusions are reached and absolutely nothing is resolved, and then it's completely forgotten about for the rest of the book. I suppose it would be disappointing if you had any reason to care about any of these people? I don't know.

At any rate, I expected this book to be bad, but it was surprising in the way that it was bad. Instead of earnest, melodramatic cheese bad, it was shoddily-thrown-together, barely-a-story bad.

0/5