The Lodestone Trilogy

The Lodestone Trilogy
Mark Whiteway, 2011

I received a copy of this book from BookRooster for the purposes of review.

Premise: The Kelanni are ruled by a Prophet who might not have their best interests at heart, might not even be part of their species! Rebels Lyall and Alondo, kitchen-maid Shall and former soldier Keris must team up to save their people.

This is a first for me. I didn’t finish this book. Well, technically I finished the first book, but it’s a trilogy in one volume, so I didn’t finish the whole thing. Generally, if I don’t finish a book, I don’t review it, but in this case I did get a galley, and if I don’t write something about it now, I’ll feel like I have to read the rest, and life is just too short for that.

Is it terrible? No. It’s passable sci-fi on an intriguing world. But the characters are unlikable cardboard and the details are maddeningly inconsistent.

I think I dislike all of the main characters. I dislike how most of them are introduced, with a bare touch of stock back-story that doesn’t actually add any gravitas. I don’t think any of them have a believable reason for going on the quest, and they consistently act like idiots. I figure that the idea is that Shann will grow into a good, strong person, but at this point (a few chapters into Book Two) I kind of want her to fail, because she’s such a stubborn blockhead. The male characters can’t seem to be serious for two minutes in a row and Keris’ bitterness feels fake and tired to me. All of these characterizations could work, I’ve known characters like them that are compelling and believable, but these just don’t work for me.

The details of the plot and setting keep jarring me out of the story. One example: on one page a minor character’s relationship with main character A is played up and important and emotional, and five pages later the same minor character’s heretofore unmentioned relationship with man character B is supposed to be really important and heart-wrenching? Huh? Motivations are harped on or ignored by turns. It’s unclear for way too long whether there is night on this planet. There’s a lot of foreshadowing that makes scenes which are written like reveals just read as expected information.

The lodestone technology is really interesting, and the prologue chapter is really cool, and that’s what caused me to pick the galley in the first place. But I’m going to stop reading now, because I just don’t care what happens.

DNF, 2 Stars - An Okay Book