The Oyster Thief

Book Title: The Oyster Thief

Author: Sonia Faruqi

Date Started: August 20th 2018

Date Completed: August 27th 2018

Genres: Fantasy

Quality Rating: Two Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Two Stars

Final Rating: Two stars

Review:

◆ Thanks to NetGalley and Pegasus Books for this ebook for review ◆

Well, that was disappointing. I got around 15% through this book, and had been looking for an excuse since the first chapter. Was there a specific thing that annoyed me no end? No. But everything just... wasn't very good.

The writing is so analytical and over-descriptive that it just becomes boring. Simple tasks take a page because it's just being filled iwth unnecessary words. And the description isn't even adding anything! It's there for the sake of sounding poetic, I guess. But it comes across more like a textbook than narration. At times it just feels pretentious and vapid. I mean, these names, come on. They aren't artistic choices or symbolic, it's just trying to create a style without doing the groundwork.

Upon reading a few other reviews, I've seen The Oyster Thief described as 'awkwardly formal', which is dead on. It might be that the author is trying to recreate a fairytale style. If so, then the direct dialogue would be okay, but then you need to have symbolic imagery. It's all about subtext. Dialogue isn't believable if the characters come straight out and say what they're thinking, because people don't talk like that. We don't say what's bothering us, but it's there in the subtext. Yeah, fairytales use a slightly different style where they speak plainly, but in those cases the subtext/moral/meaning or whatever else you want to call it is in the setting, the action, the imagery.

Ultimately, why I gave up on this book was because nothing was happening. I mean, nothing. I was sat there thinking 'are you going to give me a plot line or just tell me everyone's life stories?' Not only does it distract from the plot, but I really didn't care. In the brief moments of (cliché) where the the story held together for a moment, it depended so much on how invested I was in the characters. Which, sadly, was missing.

In all honesty, it feels like a kid's book, and not a very good one - definitely not what you want from an adult fantasy. To give credit where it's due, the idea could've been good but I don't think the choice of style and the decision to stop making edits at this stage were at all right. As it is, this book wasn't really worth it.