Title: Where Dreams Descend
Author: Janella Angeles
Series: Kingdom of Cards #1
Had potential, but ultimately a disappointing drag
I would like to thank Meghan Harrington for inviting me to join the blog tour, and also Janella Angeles, Wednesday Books/St. Martin’s Press, and NetGalley for allowing me to read a free ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Every time I tried to read this, I either spaced off or fell asleep. I wasted so much time over the last couple of weeks trying to read this book—and I still only made it to 44%. It felt longer than anything Sarah Maas could write. I was trying to cram it today so I get my review up for the blog tour, but I kept nodding off! After an hour of reading a paragraph—falling asleep—startling awake and reading the same paragraph—falling asleep—I finally woke up and said, “Fuck it! It’ll have to be a DNF! I’m so sick of this boring-ass book that feels like it’s going nowhere fast.”
And what really frustrates me—aside from the time lost—is that there was so much potential, both in the story and the writing. I wanted to like this book with its intrigue and magic . . . wanted to like the characters—mysterious Jack, reckless Kallia, traumatized Daron, loyal Aaros—but the problem with them was the same as the biggest issue I had with the story: I felt like I was running in place. I was chasing the prize of fascinating lore and endearing, multidimensional characters, but while I could see them in the distance, waiting for me with arms outstretched, the road only got longer as I ran, extended by excessive exposition and repetitive inner monologue. Mystery needs to build, yes, but you’ve got to keep a steady if not fast pace and give the reader some answers if you expect them to stay interested. No one likes a tease.
The book also did a poor job of explaining itself; for example, it took me a long time to figure out that not all magicians are showmen and not all showmen are magicians. At the very start, we were introduced to Jack and Kallia as they performed magic to entertain the patrons of the nightclub. Or Kallia did, at least. That implanted the idea that showmanship and magic go hand-in-hand, and so I thought they were more or less hiring another magician for the circus, except the circus was apparently all women and only Canary was a magician, plus none of the judges had anything to do with the circus, so—Christ, I don’t know. I can hardly explain it when I never understood it. Whatever, moving on. (Can you feel the fucks I give dwindling?)
As I said, the writing also had potential, but this read—not like a first draft, it wasn’t that messy, but it read like the third or fourth draft that had only been seen by the author, maybe some beta readers, and had yet to be worked on by an editor. It needed line editing badly; I was distracted from time to time by comparisons that didn’t make sense or weird wording or something illogical. Granted, this was an ARC, so perhaps those things were corrected for the final.
And that’s all the more time I’m giving this disappointment. Overall, the story was a giant amorphous blob of potential that never took shape. Or at least didn’t take shape quickly enough for my taste.
P. S. – I’m reading a lot of reviews that match my sentiments almost exactly, even by reviewers who read the whole book. Apparently I didn’t miss anything by cutting out early.
