Author: Thomas Wheeler
Illustrated by: Frank Miller
Page number: 416
Substance:
Our protagonist Nimue has special connection to dark magic therefore she was always an outcast. She is about to leave when the Red Paladins attack her village. Her mother gets injured by them. As she is dying, she asks Nimue to take a sword to a magician, who will be able to help to save her people.
During the book she tries to discover her destiny and learn about her true power.
On her way she meets Arthur and his sister Morgan who will accompany her throughout the journey.
I was really looking forward to this book, since it had quite a big hype around it. I was expecting something adventurous and exciting. Well, it was something different. I don't mean this in a bad way, it has some great parts, I just had really high expectations, I guess.
But what's my opinion in details?
Firstly, it was full of action. I cannot say that it was boring. This book is packed with fights, and difficult situations. However, despite it is suspenseful the main storyline is incredibly slow. It was okay for a while, since the main issue in a book (just in general) that, what the main character wants is not easily accomplishable. The main caharcter must go through and adventure for it. But in this book, I was just reading and reading, and the main storyline, wasn't different than 100 pages ago. It was frustrating.
Another thing that I didn't like is how random this book is. I mean most of the actions were so out of the blue, they just didn't make any sense. I don't want to give an example in case someone is reading or planning to read this book.
As for the characters.
I liked one of them and it was Arthur, because he was the only one who actually had common sense. (Beside Merlin, but he only got himself together for the second half of the book.) Morgan was the one who didn't add anything to the story in my opinion. She just tried to convince Nimue how good she is. Honestly. Whenever Nimue questioned herself, Morgan was there to tell her she is the greatest. It bothered me because some of Nimue's actions were violent and unreasonable.
And that leads us to the reason why I struggled with this book. The main character has no own thoughts. Every thought she had every move she made was because someone else was there to tell her what to think and what to do. It disturbed me until the end of the book when she finally did what she wanted to.
Anyhow, something superb that I can say is that the story didn't have too many characters. It wasn't hard to keep up with who is who.
Lastly, the end. I enjoyed it. It wasn't the typical end that most books have. It may leave some people unsatisfied, but personally I think it's a great and unexpected ending.
The illustrations make the book really unique. I haven't read any book which had this kind of pictures in it before, so I love that they included them. Every one of them looks gorgeous.
If you ask me the cover looks amazing. I love the colours and the drawing style. One thing that I would like to emphasize is that its surprisingly soft (or at least my copy is soft). Because of this its good to hold and read the book, however in effect its vulnerable. So, if you are someone who cannot be careful with books I would recommend you to buy the hard cover, or at least touch the book before you buy it to see how hard the cover of that copy is.
Overall rating: 10/6
