The Undays of Aralias Lyons

Book Title: The Undays of Aralias Lyons

Author: K. L. Horvath

Date Started: October 2nd 2015

Date Completed: October 6th 2015

Genres: Adventure, Fantasy, Romance, Historical
Quality Rating: Two Stars
Enjoyment Rating: Three Stars

Final Rating: Three stars

Review:

◆ Thank you NetGalley for this eBook copy for review ◆

Going into this knowing pretty much nothing other than it involved time travel, The Undays of Aralias Lyons ended up being an entertaining read - but not necessarily one I would pick up if I could go back in time myself.

The biggest thing that stuck out about the writing in this book was the fact it felt like I'd been thrown into the middle of the story. Knowing not a lot about this to start with, I genuinely thought I had missed a book in the series - so I accepted that there were things I wasn't going to understand at first. But then I found out this is Horvath's debut as a published author. And that was a problem. I'm happy to not be spoon fed information, but with so many bizarre variations on the world (talking animals, a huge variety of ages that are never stated, strange rules about time travel) we need a little explanation as to what's happening so it doesn't distract us from the story itself. I found this with the exposition too: while I enjoyed picking up parts of Aralias' past as we went along, I didn't really feel the gravity of danger because we're never really told what Bliss has done to be so evil. Overall, I think Horvath ran ahead of herself in excitement but just needed to slow down and think.

Horvath has definitely created an imaginative story. Although I haven't read a vast selection of books looking at time travel, I think the locations chosen as well as the times worked nicely as a backdrop for the story. I probably would've liked these places to have a little more importance to the story, but they were nice to see things play out in nonetheless.

There isn't that much I can really say about the story other than it was entertaining enough to take up my time, but quite frankly by the end I was a bit bored. I think there's loads of continuity errors in the time-travelling parts but I couldn't keep track of the confusion enough to be sure. And that's fine - for a while. But as it dragged further and on I found it harder and harder to stay engaged, and the fact the book goes on for an unnecessarily long amount of time after the resolution didn't really help.

Aside from the two protagonists I didn't find many of the characters particularly distinguishable. The way you could tell them apart was how bluntly rude or polite Aralias was to them, and I feel like if a little more development had gone into these people there would've been a stronger foundation for the rest of the story to lie on.

While I really enjoyed the father/son relationship Aralias had with Jack (not least because it's something we rarely see these days, especially in fantasy adventures like this) and thought it worked really well to add some depth to his character, he was still incredibly irritating and arrogant. I understand that the questionable attitude was in place partially to get some interesting banter between the characters but he came off as a mean person some of the time, and I'm pretty sure we're supposed to think of him as a real hero. He definitely was not in my eyes.

Clara has me in two minds: on the one hand she played her part in the story well enough. But I can't stop thinking about how paper-thin her personality actually was: she mainly argued with the characters, had a very speedy romance with Aralias and shot a pistol every now and then (though to say this was apparent only with Clara would be a lie). To be perfectly honest, I never thought I'd read a book where the woman doesn't even get to the climax location because she's crying on the floor.

The pacing was dealt with well - whenever I got bored or lost track of what was going on it was definitely due to the explanations of the story as opposed to the pacing not being established. Though you might expect something a little more creative than just following the main protagonists going back and forth from he present for a book where time travel is a main theme, it was probably wiser in hindsight for Horvath to reign in her excitement for the story in this area. Though I still don't feel it excelled in many areas, by making sure big events were nicely spaced throughout the whole book we avoided any complete train wrecks.

If you like the 18th century and a little bit of steampunk time travel with a flamboyant protagonist then perhaps you'll enjoy Horvath's creation more than me. Don't go expecting sophistication (regardless of what the posh mannerisms of the characters might suggest), but I can see people having some fun with it if you don't take it too seriously.

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