promising, but the worldbuilding was lacking
The cover is interesting to look at and seems to have a lot of elements available to discover! I am usually not a lover of cartoon-style people on book covers but this one is actually pretty pleasing to the eye.
From the premise of the book I was expecting something vaguely like Chloe Gong’s Secret Shanghai novels or Six of Crows. The First Impression delivered an atmosphere quite like the aforementioned books and I immediately connected with the rough and tough main character. I also thought the writing style was pretty but seemed overwrought. Every word that could be descriptive was descriptive, and while I don’t necessarily dislike that, it just seemed overdone. Another critique I have is of the worldbuilding. I’m intrigued by the use of cards in magic, but I have never liked magic that takes a few words, a special object, and not much else. The main character did not seem to be affected by using her magic much at all. However, this criticism may have no ground if, as the story goes on, the card magic becomes more complex, which I would love to read about. Touching a bit on the writing style again, I was rather confused by the number of strange fantasy words that were introduced with little to no explanation.
But the world could be built stronger later on in the book and I would be very interested to see more more details about the magic system and to see where the main character’s tricky business of curse breaking takes her!
From the premise of the book I was expecting something vaguely like Chloe Gong’s Secret Shanghai novels or Six of Crows. The First Impression delivered an atmosphere quite like the aforementioned books and I immediately connected with the rough and tough main character. I also thought the writing style was pretty but seemed overwrought. Every word that could be descriptive was descriptive, and while I don’t necessarily dislike that, it just seemed overdone. Another critique I have is of the worldbuilding. I’m intrigued by the use of cards in magic, but I have never liked magic that takes a few words, a special object, and not much else. The main character did not seem to be affected by using her magic much at all. However, this criticism may have no ground if, as the story goes on, the card magic becomes more complex, which I would love to read about. Touching a bit on the writing style again, I was rather confused by the number of strange fantasy words that were introduced with little to no explanation.
But the world could be built stronger later on in the book and I would be very interested to see more more details about the magic system and to see where the main character’s tricky business of curse breaking takes her!