The Book That Gave Me Indigestion

I am going to start off firstly, by saying how this is not typical of me to be so worked up over not liking a book. And I usually don’t not like books either. I’m super easy going in my reading.

And the worst part is….this didn’t frustrate me because it was just horrible all the way through. It frustrated me because the Author had such cool ideas and then literally decided to not care enough to do his own creativity justice.

The Memory of Lost Dreams (In case you were feeling curious and/or a masochist)

My rating: 2.5/5 (It only got that high because I truly thought the concept was interesting)

Blurb: A dystopian novel set in a post-apocalyptic future. A young man, Malik, flees his village, stumbles upon a ruined city from the past and discovers REQUIEM and he is transported to another world. I mean it’s cool, this world is actually the past (or is it? I’m not spoiling it for those who are curious and want to read it). A Chief Overlord has imposed a dystopian culture on society and most seem to just accept it, but there is a hero amongst them and will stop at nothing to help the world and Malik is caught in the middle.

Despite this not being a first edition and not truly an ARC (Published in 2015 first), it was in need of some HEAVY editing. There were so many grammatical errors and they were enough that you were like ‘did anyone read through this beforehand? Did a seal edit this and its flippers caused some of these errors?’

Most of his writing is standard, easy/simple as if one might be reading a middle school level book (and you know what, it could easily be one with a bit more editing and some rewrites) but things would be written so awkwardly that you just ended up wondering ‘WHYYYYYYYY.’

….

BUT THEN
….
BUT THEN, this man comes out of nowhere and literally gives you some wonderfully written sentences with prose that makes you raise your eyebrows and nod quietly as you read it..I mean I don’t know how you’d nod noisily but that’s not the point. The point? It was hard to be thrown around like two authors were playing some prank on you because that’s what it felt like when the style had such an abrupt change.

TBH I’ve also never read such awkward dialogue, guys, it was bad, like you winced, because it felt so unnatural. And in fact, it was those parts that usually had me sighing dramatically as I checked the page counter. [431 pages, divided into 2 parts if anyone is curious] The characters use speech that is either too relaxed or dramatic depending on the situation and lord, my knickers were in a twist whenever Malik and Rachel spoke, it was like watching a train crash and being forced to keep watching it, unable to turn away. [Also on a small personal annoyance, I’m really annoyed that Malik’s karate instructor was named Mr Saito. Don’t ask why but it caused me to roll my eyes whenever it was mentioned.]

A lot of people complained about character development and I could see why but I do have to say something in defense of the Author at this point; his story wasn’t about the characters. It was about society, it was about the power of government and what is plausible if people let others take power and never step in. Not every story we read is about the characters, but, the others were right to a point, Malik (our main character) did not seem to grow and at one point in the book when one would think he would have matured he doesn’t. Not to mention he and the others are so flat, that with the fact that the rest of the writing is subpar, means that unfortunately this novel was a huge NO for me at the end of the day despite me really wanting to like the story.

I hope he does more editing, frankly, it needs to be rewritten but if he does and really works at it, I could see it being a pretty damn good novel, for now? I’m gonna go detox.

Great ideas, definitely a creative mind to come up with them but poorly executed.

[I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. I think we can all say my review was definitely honest.]