Cinema Fiction

I've read many good things about this series and so me being a book nerd, I finally decided to follow the hype. Even though the synopsis didn't sound so appealing to me, I tried it. And, well, it wasn't a complete fail at least.

I'm not one for science fiction worlds, mostly because if I can't fully picture the setting in my head, I can't really connect to the characters. Rossi's world did just that. At first, the world building seemed disjunct to me. I had a hard time figuring out Reverie, the realms, the outside, all that. Of course once I got through the middle of the book I understood it more. Yet still, I found myself pushing through the book to read it, hoping to find something redeeming and worthwhile that would make me reach the end.

That came in the form of Perry. Perry was an interesting character. I loved his abilities, I loved the way he struggled to hold them and control them around Aria. I wish there had been more, but I feel like in this book we just scraped the surface of what he could do. Aria bugged the crap out of me. If she had written a whole story around Perry I would have been just fine with that. I also liked Roar (which is a badass name for a character, by the way). I didn't care for the relationship between Perry and Aria, to be honest. It wasn't as in depth as most YA relationship were. Either that, or it was probably just because I didn't like Aria.

Now to comment on the writing itself. I'm not an expert, I'm just reader. But when I read books that are simply just, "she did this" "he did that" or books that have action sequences that aren't really that exciting, it puts me off a bit. I found myself sighing in action sequences because they just didn't have that complexity I needed to really be into that action. Third person narrative can be tricky, because it's easy to just "tell" the reader instead of "show" the reader, and that's what I felt like the whole book was.

The whole book wasn't bad. There were some redeeming qualities, and the world itself is very original. I'll probably finish the trilogy, but it is not going to be one of my favorites, that's for sure.