Amber's Book Reviews

Cursed to Live: The Awakening

@TheSpadeAndAce 

Genre: Fantasy

Summary: Since time immemorial, nobody had ever surpassed death. They invented sorcery to bridge the chasm between them and divinity, yet none came close to escaping the clutches of the Grim Reaper. It was all until Eva Alaine, a broken and curious soul, woke up in a coffin of petals with a crown atop her head.

No longer a mere peasant, Eva sought to solve the mystery of her rebirth. It is now up to her and her newfound family to win the cruel game of society.

Control her, kill her, or worship her; everyone had their own agenda. Religions will bend their belief, and the parliament will ignore the law, all for the sake of solving the riddle of the princess who defied death.

The faith and harmony of the world hang in jeopardy as everybody made their play. In a massive chess game of power and influence, those who have wits will reign as the victor

Each stroke of her pen etched the anthologies of her adventures.

Each page of her diary held joy, sorrow, and growth.

Each act in her story was an effort to redemption.

Review Chapter by Chapter:

Prologue

Let me begin by saying I LOVE the prologue. Having the diary entries is such a unique idea, and it gives a real insight into the mind of the MC. The entries were so well written and well thought out I could believe they belonged to a real person. The author seems to have a clear understanding of his MC to be able to write from her perspective so well. Even with so little detail I was able to learn a lot about the MC. The last diary entry was just enough of a cliff hanger to make me eager to read chapter one.

Chapter 1

The author has a real talent for description. At the beginning of the chapter, the void in particular, is well done. I was able to experience it right along with the MC. The author jumps right into the story, but it is a very appropriate beginning after the diary prologue. There is a small introduction to the world's magic that was handled very well. The cliffhanger was brilliant.

Chapter 2 

I'm just not sure what happened here. I feel like the prologue and chapter one were written by one person and then chapter two was written by a totally different person. The writing style changes, there were some problem with sentence structure in this chapter, and our characters don't seem to be the same people we had previously been introduced to. The MC, Eva, was coolheaded and calm in the prologue and first chapter, but in chapter two she acts like an uneducated brat. The Dr., Ferdinand, just completely goes off the rails and attacks the MC out of nowhere. His actions just don't seem believable or true to character for me here.

Chapter 3 

I was confused a little at the end of chapter two when the king was knocking on the door, but then didn't enter her chambers? It seemed to me we were missing something here. The King's behavior also seemed almost as an afterthought. He was very quick to let everyone else make decisions regarding his daughter, which might be how he is as a character, but it doesn't set the stage for a very well rounded character in my opinion. He was too quick to back down to Ferdinand. He pitched a fit about seeing her then immediately turned around and let her go.  We are introduced to another Darius. This character seems to be more like the MC, in the fact that he is well thought out and more developed compared to the King. 

Chapter 4

It seems like we switch authors again here. Whoever wrote the prologue and chapter one takes back over with chapter four and it was great. Eva is back to the character she was in the beginning two chapters. She seems smart and cunning again. Ferdinand has made a complete turn around. He went from attacking her out of no where and threatening her to lending her a scholarly book. This seems to fit him much better as a character than his behavior in chapter three did. He keeps a cool head about him when they are being followed. I really enjoyed how the author gave us more information about the world's magic through Eva reading one of Ferdinand's books. This was a very clever way to inform us without having to use dialogue or a huge info dump paragraph. The cliff hanger ending was well done in this chapter as well.

Overall Review

Pros: This was hard for me because I truly feel like two separate people wrote the chapters. The prologue, Chapter one, and Chapter four were beautifully written. The characters were well developed, the descriptions were amazingly well done. There were no grammatical errors that caught my eye. The writing flowed well. The pace of the story was perfect. The author seems to have a good grasp of where he is taking the story. It is a very unique story line so far, and I definitely enjoyed what I read. 

Cons: Chapters two and three were hard for me to get through. I didn't think the characters were acting believably, they seemed to be very one-dimensional. The sentence structures had some problems, and I caught a few grammatical errors. THAT BEING SAID, chapters two and three were not bad or so poorly written they were unreadable, they were just not polished to the level that the other chapters I read were. Due to the fact that those chapter were all together I was a harder judge of chapters two and three, because I had the other chapters for direct comparison.