Tuesday, March 7, 2017

Review: Dark Communion by C. J. Perry

Title: Dark Communion
Author: C. J. Perry
Genre: Dark Fantasy

I received an eARC from the publisher in exchange for my honest and unbiased review.

Description from GoodReads
A cursed line of Minotaurs has kept Ayla’s people enslaved for 200 years. With nothing left to live for and a death sentence in her womb, Ayla trades her soul to a dark goddess for a chance to break the curse that keeps her people in chains. Armed with only her faith, Ayla and her brethren lead a revolution against an army of half-beasts led by the immortal son of the Goddess Herself.

My Thoughts
I am so excited to finally be able to review this book!  I definitely enjoyed the reading experience and strongly suggest that readers of dark fantasy give this piece a shot.

There were so many things that I loved about this book.  Of these, I felt that Perry's characterization was absolutely perfect.  It is no wonder that he relied on his strong characters throughout the novel. I absolutely loved Ayla.  She was so realistic!  At the beginning, she was a rather weak individual.  After an unusual encounter with a goddess, however, she finally begins to show her stronger side.  I loved that this greeted and destroyed the stereotype that women are weak.  Perry didn't leave it at this, however, but made sure that he added a strong love of her people and her significant other.  Ayla is definitely the kind of person I would be willing to follow into battle.

Perry's characterization was not only effective in his main character, but in all of his minor characters as well.  There was not a single moment that I questioned the way that any character acted.  This made for a more realistic reading experience and added to the strength of the story. 

Perry's descriptive voice was absolutely perfect for this novel.  This piece would not have been complete without his step by step description of every battle, death, and location of items.  When paired with his exceptional characterization skills, this creates a movie-like experience.  I would definitely go to see this in theaters!

Unfortunately, there were a couple of points that I don't believe Perry did as well as he could have.  

First, it seemed that Perry jumped around too much in a few places.  While this did not completely destroy the reading experience, it did make it incredibly confusing.  It would have been more effective for Perry to do a better job clarifying such changes as they occurred.

Second, Perry spent more time on the final battle than the build up that led to that point.  There was so much going on behind the scenes as Ayla made secret plans with Butch  and other Freemen that would have made wonderful scenes had Perry taken the time to write them out.  I am sure that he had his reasons for these "deleted scenes" but I strongly believe that the overall book would have been better had he included them.

My Rating







3 comments:

  1. Thanks so much for the review! The criticism is well explained, constructive, and is being taken under advisement. Great review! Look forward to your thoughts on book 2 and would consider it a great honor if you would beta read book 2 for me in April.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I would love to beta read for you! You can find my email on the contact page. Thank you for offering me such a great opportunity!

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  2. It's now free on smashwords, btw.

    https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/701467

    If anyone feels like letting Amazon know, that'd be great.
    ;)

    ReplyDelete