Jennifer (bunnyreads)'s Reviews > Eleventh Cycle

I read this for SPFBO. To find out more about the SPFBO contest and to see the participating bloggers/authors and reviews follow the links below


I ended up having mixed-up feelings about The Eleventh Cycle and because of that this review has been the bane of my existence. At one point it was four pages long and nobody wants to read all that. There was just so much to tackle between its characters, and just the overall vast feel of the world itself that squishing my many varied thoughts about it all, down to a few paragraphs means this is going to be a jumbled mess. Apologies in advance.

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World

The Eleventh Cycles’ world of Minethria is unique- it’s dark and strange, and steeped in history. We begin with a Seed being born to the Elder Kings at Mt Morniar. An event that occurs only once in every thousand years… and right away you know this story is going to be something different.

If you are a reader who likes in-depth worlds that feel ancient, and massive- this is your dream book.

Its world is brimming with life. There’s a multitude of races. Some are at war with others, and not all of our pov’s are even fully human. It’s like a mixed-bag of every human leaning race and fantasy creature of lore or d&d that you could possibly imagine.
There are epigraphs which help with the history lessons, and little tidbits that shape out the world. I am a major fan of the usefulness of epigraphs for taking some of the pain out of info-dumps in the main body of the story. They helped to some degree here, but they didn’t quite take all that world-building pain away, unfortunately.

After awhile it seemed like every cool thing the author could think of was included, and the world kept getting bigger, darker, and weirder, all at once.


Storytelling and characters.

I enjoyed all four of the main pov’s (not so much the 5th pov. The Seed -who for awhile is just rounding out our view of the world and moves in to the forefront later).

They each had their own struggles with events- some quite horrific- that changed their lives. This is a grim setting and Ardalan, puts the characters through the ringer. Sometimes knocking them back down almost as soon as they crawl back to their feet.
These characters aren’t the type to lay down and die either. Which I liked. I prefer a certain hopeful tone in my grimdark: at the very least a need for them to overcome the obstacles that life has brought. I did find enough of that fight in them, to hold a balance that would keep me reading.

I’d like to say, I’m not exactly sure where or why this story went off the rails for me, because I was absorbed in the characters and where they would end up. But I know a big part of my drop in interest had to do with the story shift in the back third.

Until then, I was enamoured with the characters; they had trials, they had growth, they and the people around them, were fascinating. I wanted to know about their lives.

But in the back third I found I was losing interest and I don’t want to say this story should have been bigger because… good grief, but maybe more focussed to the characters who are most affected?

Because they seemed to stall-out after they reached a certain point of establishment. There was a gap in life events. We went from experiencing events, to events being told to us. So, when key points that had up to this point been somewhat glossed-over in the background, were moved forward to trigger the turning points for the characters- they fell a little flat. If that makes sense.
Dalila and Yasmin are a great example- though we meet Yasmin early on and the two interact, their friendship- after it begins, moves almost entirely to the background to us being told they hung out together. Which took some of the punch out of the later events with Dalila, and with it her follow-up choices.

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This was an ambitious story and I think it will hit everyone a little different depending on their tastes. I adored the characters (though I thought we could easily drop a couple) but I found the world-building as cool as it was- over full, with lots of unneeded information. I had so many notes trying to keep it all straight and I probably referred back to them for only a couple of things at most and the rest fell aside under the label of didn't add much we needed to know, but it was a neat idea.

TLDR:


The Eleventh Cycle was the Frankenstein’s monster of everything you can think of in fantasy, sewn together into something that somehow mostly works- despite the need for a good strong edit. And maybe the lightning that brings this world alive was that Kian’s characters were just so darned fascinating. They kept me turning page after page, curious about them and curious to see how they would all fit together.



Other notes-

----Mind the spoilers ahead-----
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The story takes a pretty brutal turn, especially for the one character. I’ll be as vague here as I possibly can. So, this character fought tooth and nail, to came back from a horrific loss, only to be put back to square one (and then some) just as she is somewhat recovered. But to also have the SA on top of the rest, just felt like it pushed things a bit over the edge. If we are looking for an exploration of loss of a person’s power (and she was a very strong courageous woman who didn’t need others to fight her battles) then, to me, it seemed she had lost that already. But I’m not the author, so that’s all I have to say about that.


spfbo score-6





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