Warrior's Rise by LJ DeLeon

I was excited about this book because it involved the Fae. The Fae is a topic I really enjoy reading about because it is so fast, there as so many different way to include them in a book, and so much is able to come right out of the author's imagination. Any time an author is able to put their stamp on something or where the reader gets a good feel for the authors imagination is fun for me as a reader.

As with most of my reviews I want to start off with the things I like about the book. I am seriously impressed with the authors ability to have such an imagination. It is clear from page one that the author has an amazing imagination and really did as much as possible to convey that to the reader. Because DeLeon had such a creative vision it resulted in a complex plot. Complex plots are kind of a double edge sword for me. Either that are complex in a way that is compelling and makes the reader want to flip the next page, or the plot is so ambitious and complex that it can be hard for the reader to follow. I think this book teeters the line. There were certainly moments when I felt confused because things were too complicated, and there were moments where the complex plot had me wanting to read quicker so I could find out what would happen next.

One other aspect I liked about this book was the characters. I found Deva to be an interesting character with a heavy load on her shoulders. Deva is the Caidh Arm, the Goddess' holy weapon, which essentially gives her a lot more powers than she had before as well as make her a target for the dark. She is coming to very powerful powers as an adult, and that has to be a hard adjustment to make. She spends most of this book growing as a character, both as a Fae with powers and as a person. Deva is being guarded by Padraig, which just adds more depth to her character as the relationship develops.

Padraig is also an interesting character, and I like him because he is such a strong character. A lot of the problems I have with characters who are in a protection type role, is they always seem to want to minimize their character, they end up being controlling and never really let the character they are protecting come into their own. I don't think this was a problem for him which is why I enjoyed reading him more, he was part teacher and part protector.

And now for the things I had problems with in the book. There was way to much information all at once. This was evident for me in chapter one. I felt like the author had this great really creative idea in their head and then wanted to tell me, the reader, all about it, as quickly as possible. You were not only introduced to a lot of a characters quickly, but given so much information about them and the situation it was hard to organize the characters in my head. However, the biggest problem I had with this was that I didn't feel like I knew the characters themselves. When you don't know the characters, the reader can't form an emotional bond to them. You miss out on a lot of the details not just with characters but with world building. And those are two huge elements you don't want to feel that you don't know enough about.

I also found in parts there were issues with things were phrased awkwardly or the grammar needed some work that had me having to stop and re-read things, which ultimately led to disrupting my flow when reading the book. I am one of those readers who once my flow has been disrupted it can cause me to lose interest in the book, because it frustrates me.

In the end I am going to have to give this book a "so-so" because while it had some great elements, especially on the creative side, but the execution just wasn't always there so I had hard time really getting into the book. I really wish that there had been less elements within the book, so that the author could have focused more on other elements that would have helped me identify with the book and the characters.