Page Count: 29
Published on: May 2, 2017
Published by: Smashwords
Genre(s): Occult, YA
Source: eBook- from author
Age Rating: YA
Book Depository: {click here}
Twitter:
My Rating: 1 star
Overall Opinion: Boring and poorly written
Goodreads synopsis:
Book I, The Magician introduces 15 year-old Benjamin Porter and his attraction to the rebel, nonconforming, bad element of high school when he befriends Craig Marse (The Magician) who pushes the limits of socially acceptable behavior. Drugs and violence become a way of life for Benny as he tours through Craig’s world of bikers and drug-dealers.
A Fool’s Journey is a 21-part series of novelettes that follows Benjamin Porter (The Fool) through the Major Arcana of the Tarot. Ben’s journey begins in Book I, The Magician when he learns the use of power for destructive ends.
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Hey, guys!
I was sent this book for an honest review.
I'm just going to say up front that I did not enjoy this book at all. I'm sure the book was written to be symbolic and full of metaphors and symbolism and have an underlying message, but I just didn't get it. I thought it was boring and I didn't like the characters, the writing style, or the "plot". I knew from the beginning that I would not like this book. I was hoping for something really interesting, but after reading the first page I knew I would be bored.
From the beginning of the book, there were too many characters introduced for the reader to fully grasp their names, their identities, and their personalities. The novelette is barely thirty pages, so there was no chance to flesh out that many characters or show considerable growth from the abysmal actions that the main character was taking part in. Throughout the story, the author wrote it in a way that promoted excessive drug and alcohol abuse, gang violence, and just overall stupidity. The synopsis and the way Pannebecker pitched this to me referenced the "tarot deck" and "magic" and I thought it would enlighten me on this subject, as I have no background knowledge on tarot decks at all. This book was all drinking, swearing, drugs, and violence. I didn't have too high of hopes, but I would have hoped to have a bit of structure and at least one solid character.
I still do not know the differences between the characters of this story. All of them were fairly similarly described and I didn't get attached to any of them. They were all fairly boring in my opinion. Their actions were stupid and showed no sign of common sense. The parents of the main character just let him make extremely stupid decisions and didn't really help much at all. It was extremely unrealistic and annoying. On top of the lame characters, the plot was not structured and there was no way of knowing what was going on. It just jumped around...I assume that time was passing, but there weren't too many indicators for time either.
Don't even get me started on the representation of women. Whenever a woman was mentioned, she was sexualized, they were defined by their physical attributes (also sexualized), and were put down by the male characters. The time period (which seemed to take place in the past?) cannot excuse the lack of gender diversity in this story.
Overall, I'm not sure what this story was supposed to be. I wasn't entertained at all, the characters were lame and really dumb, there wasn't a good plot, and it promoted violence, drugs, and underage drinking. It was a bit of a mess throughout. It was not what the synopsis made it out to be, and it was just thoroughly un-entertaining.
I do not recommend.
Happy reading!
Olivia
~LivTheBookNerd~
@LivTheBookNerd on Books Amino
