Yzabel / August 15, 2014

Accession by Terah Edun

My rating: [rating=1]

Summary:

Sixteen-year-old Katherine Thompson wasn’t trained to rule a coven. That was her sister – perfect, beautiful Rose. But when a mysterious plane crash kills off the heir presumptive of the Sandersville coven she has no choice.

After stepping in to fill her sister’s shoes, Katherine realizes she didn’t have a clue – faery wars, depressed trolls and angry unicorns are just the beginning.

For centuries, her family has served the high Queens on both sides of the Atlantic but it is a well-known rule that mid-level witches stay away from high-level Queens.

But when Katherine’s youngest cousin vanishes without a trace in the Atlanta court and no one wants to investigate, Katherine decides to step into the darkness on her own. She will soon discover that nothing, in a queen’s court, is as it seems.

Review:

(I was given a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

This was a fast read, but I’m afraid to admit that’s because I ended up skimming after a while: I couldn’t stand the telling-not-showing style. Actually, I was this close to DNFing, and only finished because I felt I had to write a review.

There was definite groundwork here for an interesting world (the witch queens of the original thirteen colonies, having to maintain political balance between various factions of supernatural creatures…). It is a rich world, with a lot of tensions, differences between the Queens and how they rule their respective territories, alliances that may be toppled at the slightest change, diplomatic conundrums to keep in mind, and a potential political assassination (Rose’s death was pitched as an accident; I so can’t believe that).

However, I think this setting wasn’t exploited in a way that would have made the reading pleasant, mostly because of the pacing and the writing style—two aspects that tie into each other, in my opinion. I started sensing this problem in the first two chapters, and it got confirmed later, as more and more information was dumped onto the reader in the middle of scenes. For instance, there’s this one scene where the Queen is sentencing a secondary character, and while it should have been filled with tension, it got slowed down by Katherine remembering information about other courts and other events: it wasn’t uninteresting, but it definitely dragged the plot down. Other similar scenes suffered the same fate.

Also, Katherine’s character just didn’t appeal to me, both in personality and in how almost everything was introduced. She had a tendency to just voice out loud whatever went through her head, especially when she was alone, which looked really weird (this coming from someone who tends to think out loud, so if I find it bizarre, then it sure means something). She acted in immature ways, wasted time in useless bouts of dialogue. Worst, most of the time, I was told she was this and that, felt like this or that, supposed this or that character thought this or that… A lot of telling, and too little showing. It coincided with a few plot points coming out of the blue: we’re told she’s not popular at school, is picked on by teachers and at best ignored by a lot of pupils… but then, around the 25% mark, we suddenly learn she had a boyfriend six months ago. I think he should have been introduced sooner, since it was kind of important (all the more because of some big reveal later on).

As mentioned above, the writing consisted in much more telling than actual actions showing the characters as they really were, and I caught quite a few similes that looked pretty strange and useless:

“Their massive trunks were so wide at the base that the trees looked like the round teepees of the Native American shamans who came to Georgia once a year to renew the sacred 1850 concord of Coven-Shaman Relations.”

Some sentences/paragraphs I had to read three times in order to get their meaning:

“I guess I can’t ever call life in Sandersville boring again, Katherine thought wryly as she ignored an itch in her eye that she firmly told herself she’d deal with later. She didn’t want to draw attention to her presence in the room now. Besides, it was more than an itch. As long as she ignored the sensation it would wait and simmer, like an itch at the corner of her eye. That itch that represented more than a space of skin in need of being scratched, it was the patch on her mind and heart that was holding closed a dark well ready to burst open with the rush of emotions boarded up behind its cap.”

And the one mistake I really, really can’t deal with:

“The gator’s mouth might as well of been a flimsy stick…”

This book would have needed a couple more rounds of editing.

Conclusion: I skimmed, I unfortunately got bored, I didn’t really get a sense of a plot, and the writing style irked me in no time.