Acacia

I listened to this book through an audiofile and the narrator was amazing - he made the story come to life. I often wondered if it was his interpretation of the novel as he read it that made it seem so good to me.

The book itself was interesting because it starts off with some tropes that I don't particularly enjoy - royalty, princesses, palaces, and such. I actually retired it the first time I started reading it wondering why every fantasy book had to have some royal person or family - what about everyone else.

When I actually did take the time once again - and listen more closely to the story, I found the story interesting enough to put aside my dislike of the whole king queen princess prince thing and instead focus on the intricate world that the author created.

Each chapter of the book appeared to be well planned out and well written - you could almost feel the crispness of it as you went through it. This may be due in part to the narrator that read the story but the author himself appeared to have the skill of both story telling as well as planning out his story with an exactness. Each chpater flowed into one another despite the fact that the novel actually jumped around from character's point of view to point of view.

The author appeared to focus on several characters effectively in telling their stories. I was intrigued by the underlying issues in the story for which there was no resolution - the quota, the slave trade in children, the enslaved sorcerers.

I did enjoy how women were represented in the book for the most part - in the sense that the author introduced them in their sterotypcial roles and then something unique woudl come out of their roles that were not envisioned by me in reading the world the author created - in terms of gender roles.

The story had magic in it - as many fantasies do and I though the presence of magic was interesting but not overly heavy in its appearance. I have not read fantasy in some time and found the stories and magic refreshing as well as the characters and how they interplayed with one another.

I will be reading some more fantasy books though so I will have to come back to this review and add my two cents to whether or not I thought the stories were original or unique. I read some other reviews that said that the story as far as fantasies go was "meh..." so...I will update this review in the future.