Tag Archives: epic

EDDA by Conor Kostick

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This one was alright.  Not as good as the first of the series, but alright.  The story was fairly interesting, but nothing too amazing.  The danger didn’t feel very real for most of the story.  Magic, as usual, is cheap and overpowered.  I also didn’t really feel as invested in the characters this time, especially the returning ones.  I’ve kind of grown bored of them and they didn’t really develop much more in this one.

The writing itself was similar to the other two in the series, nothing remarkable.  He repeated things that didn’t need repeating fairly often and sometimes told what he had already spent a few sentences showing, ruining the effect.  He also gravitates more toward saying things explicitly, rather than leaving us to infer, which sometimes makes me feel like he thinks I’m stupid.  Which would be okay for a young age group, which is who most of it is written for, but then he has a habit of using unnecessarily intelligent words.  I had to use the dictionary a few times and I am older than his target audience and read the dictionary for fun.  Again, this isn’t always a bad thing if the word is the best choice, but there were times when a more common word would have worked just as well.

Overall, I’m glad I’m done.  The series started off well and immediately went downhill, as so many do.  I am debating whether I want to read his other book or not.  I definitely will be reading others before it if I do.

Saga by Conor Kostick

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Pretty good.  Not my favorite, but pretty good.  A good follow-up to EPIC.  It had an interesting premise and characters.  There were some improvements made from EPIC, namely in the POV department.  He took it to a whole new level, but executed it well.  The changes felt more regular and better prepared than in the first book.  They were a little confusing at first, but once I got used to them, they definitely added to the story.  The writing itself was just about the same as the first book, not perfect but pretty good.  He was a little inconsistent at times; there were a couple of times I noticed he referred to a character by his full name, then a little later by his shortened nickname and back again.  It didn’t take away from my understanding of the book at all, but it felt wrong.

In terms of story, I was a little disappointed.  It started out kinda slow and took a long time to get going.  There was very little at first that would hint at where it was going.  It just seemed to be pulling itself along with no goal.  Eventually the goal became clear, but the story didn’t really speed up until the last few chapters.  Even then, the sense of danger and fear of failure never really came.  Maybe I’m just too picky, but I’m adding this one to my pile of stories that I feel have low stakes, low danger and a disappointing climax.  But I still enjoyed it.  Mostly.  Not quite as much as EPIC.  Probably won’t be reading it again.

Epic by Conor Kostick

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I enjoyed this book.  I had started it a few years ago, but I don’t think I finished it.  I’m glad I went back.  The tale is a refreshing take on the overused “young hero leads rebellion to destroy dystopian society” story.  It had the same basic idea as The Hunger Games and Divergent and the Inheritance Cycle and… you get the point.  However, this story had a different feel.  Aside from the general idea, the overall story arc was different.  I don’t want to spoil anything, but it wasn’t the usual “nobody teen hero is discovered and put at the head of an established army to fight an age-long war” thing.  A nice change.

It did suffer a little bit from what I have noticed in a lot of stories I’ve experienced lately, that the story is too easy.  A couple of the major events didn’t really seem to put the heroes in serious danger.  There wasn’t really the uncertainty that the hero would survive.  Aside from him telling us that they were struggling, I didn’t really get the sense that they were having much difficulty.  That brings me to another point.  Overall, the writing was great, but I felt like he could have done a better job “showing, not telling” in places.  But he did do a fantastic job in many places of painting a very vivid image in my mind.  There were other minor issues with the writing sometimes (like using the
POV character’s name more than he should have in a short stretch) but it mostly fell away as I got more invested in the story.  His dialogue did cause some issues for me at times through the whole thing.  I got lost in some exchanges trying to figure out who was saying and doing what.

How he structured the story felt a bit off sometimes as well.  It felt very fast sometimes and could have benefited from slowing down between events.  His choice of point of view changes felt awkward as well.  It was extremely irregular with most of the book from one character’s POV, but with half a chapter here and there from another character’s and one page from another’s and so on.  This might not bother some people, but it felt strange to me. 

Now I have just pointed out all the problems I had with the book, and most of these complaints really had very little effect on my enjoyment of the book.  I still definitely recommend the story to young adults interested in fantasy and sci-fi.  The book creates a nice mix of elements from both.  He created a fascinating world and interesting characters.  I am now about to start the second one and am looking forward to it, so I will waste no more time writing this.