ILLBORN by Daniel T. JacksonMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
The concept here was pretty interesting and the back-cover blurb was good enough to hook me. For a debut novel, it was not too bad … but it was not very good either. The opening scene starts with an encounter between a priest/witch hunter and a child with mysterious abilities that apparently are something of a threat to the established church (which is a dead ringer for the Catholic Church with a mashup of inquisition and crusades). What this threat is remains a mystery for the entire story (why are they hunted as heretics) … in fact … I can’t really identify what the main plot conflict actually is, other than 4 POV just trying to survive the world trying to kill them (and we never find out why; although they are apparently linked by a recurring dream that the author felt needed to be repeated nearly word for word ad nauseam). Without an identifiable plot conflict, you can’t really expect any resolution at the end right … which is what you get; a story that just sort of ends with just as many questions as it started with … except all the pieces have been moved on the board a little.
I had a tough time connecting to any of the four (4) main characters … they, just like the supporting characters, seemed pretty one dimensional and interactions too mechanical to make them natural or realistic. In fact, the only one to which I had any interest in was the priestess … just barely. The powers themselves were interesting, but they were revealed rather awkwardly with very little nuance or finesse (and they started to overlap toward the end … which for some reason didn’t seem right). There is potential for a great story in the guts of this story, it just hasn’t been fleshed out very well yet.
I was given this free advance reader copy (ARC) ebook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.
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