Bookworm Speaks! - An Accident of Stars

Bookworm Speaks!

An Accident of Stars

by Foz Meadows

****

Acquired: Barnes and Noble Booksellers

Series: The Manifold Worlds (Book 1)

Paperback: 496 pages

Publisher: Angry Robot (August 2, 2016)

Language: English

Subject: Fantasy

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The Story: When Saffron Coulter stumbles through a hole in reality, she finds herself trapped in Kena, a magical realm on the brink of civil war. 

There, her fate becomes intertwined with that of three very different women: Zech, the fast-thinking acolyte of a cunning, powerful exile; Viya, the spoiled, runaway consort of the empire-building ruler, Vex Leoden; and Gwen, an Earth-born worldwalker whose greatest regret is putting Leoden on the throne. But Leoden has allies, too, chief among them the Vex'Mara Kadeja, a dangerous ex-priestess who shares his dreams of conquest. 

Pursued by Leoden and aided by the Shavaktiin, a secretive order of storytellers and mystics, the rebels flee to Veksh, a neighboring matriarchy ruled by the fearsome Council of Queens. Saffron is out of her world and out of her depth, but the further she travels, the more she finds herself bound to her friends with ties of blood and magic. 

Can one girl - an accidental worldwalker - really be the key to saving Kena? Or will she just die trying?

The Review: Bookworm has to admit: when they saw this book on the shelves of the bookstore, they were very interested. The book had a lot of things going for it. A genderqueer author, a high fantasy adventure, strong female protagonists, and a story that breaks the gender roles that have dominated fantasy as well as fiction for decades. It seemed Bookworm was in for quite the adventure

Upon reading the book though, Bookworm had to admit a sad truth, this one of those times where the author’s ambition proved too much for their skill at writing. 

One of the most annoying things about this book is soapboxing of the text.  

That is not to say Bookworm does not agree with what the author is trying to say. Bookworm finds what happens to Saffron in the first chapter as infuriating as Saffron and the author does. The history literature though, is littered with the ruins of stories that were used as little better than vehicles for the writers and suffered accordingly. While the political and social platforms were not the sole factor in what brought this book down, they certainly poked a few holes in the bottom of the boat. 

‘Unique’ is a word that Bookworm utilizes very often when crafting these reviews. Uniqueness is important in creative venture. A story that stands out is a story that is memorable. Unfortunately this book accomplishes this in the wrong ways. When crafting a story that is intended to appeal to a wide audience, the author needs to strike a balance. The balance is the one between distinctiveness and familiarity. There needs to be enough familiarity within the text to keep the world grounded and the distinctiveness needed to help it stand out. Here, the author might have gone a little too far with the building and/or executed said world building poorly. The reader is bombarded with terms and language and names and it is very easy to lose track of who and what everything is. The text as a whole, lacked familiar threads for Bookworm to latch onto and the result was very confusing. 

The best way of saying it, is that perhaps the author would have been wise to give this book one more rewrite and another round of editing. The whole thing never really finds its focus and Bookworm found themselves struggling to get through it. With trying to exemplify so many progressive ideas, such as polyamory and color-blindness, the story is rendered clunky and incoherent at times. There were several times when Bookworm had no real idea what was going on and just had to keep on reading. 

Political agendas are nothing new in the world of fiction, but the goal in writing a work of fiction is to tell a story, a story that people will want to read and be entertained by. Try to hard to make a point and the readers will simply end up losing interest in the book’s story. 

It is not all bad though. When Saffron comes into focus, her story is really quite compelling. The reader feels sympathy for her right off the bat. Her confusion and her literal and figurative pain of her unusual circumstances is written as very authentic. Saffron is really the best part of the whole novel. Her character growth is an example of how this book serves as an adult version of the ‘portal-fantasy’ a genre of fiction where a normal person from Earth is pulled into a fantasy world. Oftentimes is said stories, they go through the adventure without a scratch and return on the same day that they left. This is not the case with this book, Saffron’s disappearance goes noticed and Saffron suffers as she travels through her new paradigm, leaving scars both mental and physical. 

 A fantasy that is almost entirely dominated by women is something that needs to be appreciated, make no mistake. Male characters barely appear throughout the book. More authors should take up this author’s lead with female-centric fiction. Unfortunately, there are few more characters than necessary. The amount of point of view shifting or ‘head-hopping’ is extensive and extends the reader’s confusion. 

Bookworm thinks that they will read the sequel, if only to find out what happens to Saffron. Hopefully, she will have given her school bully his just desserts. What Bookworm also hopes for is that the author will have refined their writing in the meantime. 

Final Verdict: While ambitious and crafted with genuine emotion, this book ultimately falls prey to inconsistent writing, flat characters, and a clumsy story. The social commentary weighs the story down and creates a novel that is severely lacking. 

Rating: Two Manifold’s out of Five

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