Goddess in Waiting: A Review
General impression: I greatly enjoyed this book. It was a page-turner for me, of the irritating kind where it annoys you to have to set it down and where you pick it up again as soon as you have a chance to. Once I started reading it, I kept reading until I had finished it, pausing only for such trivia as eating, conversing with my family and paying attention to the traffic. I am admittedly a book junkie of the first order but it is not every book that consumes me in this way.
The protagonist, Amarantha, instantly commanded my full attention. She is a prime example of divinity in that as always, mankind has created its gods in its own image. She is very human in nature even as she shoulders the responsibility of divinity. She is a flawed being, deeply wounded by her past, and for that reason she spoke to me in a voice I could not ignore. I recognised parts of myself in her -- injured pride, anger, love struggling with guilt and a pain so deep that it made numbness seem preferable to hope. I have found healing for many of these injuries in my own life through the help of friends and the one I love; watching Amarantha struggle to accept the aid of her own friends and her loved one touched something deep inside me and made her very, very real to me.
The supporting cast is good, colourful and I like them all. They balance the tale's emotional intensity with practicality and moments of leavening humour. While not as deeply fleshed out they still come across as believable characters and some of them displayed quite vibrant personality just with a few sentences.
I do have a few criticisms. The first one might properly be classified as a mere nitpick. The tale involves saving the world and this is a device I feel has been used a bit too much. But this is a personal thing for me and the story works well enough that it makes me not mind.
As to the villain, he was... how best to put this. He served the purpose of being a credible threat. His motivation made sense. But apart from that, he had all the personality of a cardboard standee and he might as well have worn a sandwich board reading "OOO LOOKIT ME I AM SO SMUG." This is not a large problem as his appearances are blessedly few and far between and the final confrontation lasts no longer than it has to, but it needs to be pointed out.
One last thing that really deserves mention is the pacing. The book moves smoothly from plot point to plot point. It touches each point elegantly, covers it for long enough to ensure that it is fully developed and then moves straight and gracefully to the next one. As a result this is a short book, but in this case this is a good thing. Instead of a sprawling epic along the lines of The Dragon Procrastinating where hundreds and hundreds of pages are spent on the vital topic of the hero agonising over whether he should tell his girlfriend that he loves her, we have a clean and elegant story that tells its tale in one smooth read.
If you like well-developed characters, romance and tales of recovery and healing, this book is a marvelous read and I highly recommend it. I am giving it four stars but I really wish I could give it four and a half stars -- it comes quite close to five.
- File Size: 403 KB
- Print Length: 181 pages
- Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
- Publisher: Innamorata Press (January 18, 2018)
- Publication Date: January 18, 2018
- Sold by: Amazon.com Services LLC
- Language: English
- ASIN: B078XDQK6L
- Text-to-Speech:
Enabled
- Word Wise: Enabled
- Lending: Not Enabled
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Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#961,534 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #13199 in Multicultural & Interracial Romance
- #14511 in Multicultural Romances
- #13979 in Fantasy & Futuristic Romance
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