A tale of a young witch is a very ambitious fantasy. However, I am not sure
why it’s divided into three parts because all three happen continuously and in
the same timeline, involving the same characters.
The book has a simple but interesting beginning. We follow the story of
Amelia as some origin story because she is the titular character who starts as
someone ordinary enough with ordinary life, but it doesn’t stay that way for
long. From there, the journey goes to common fantasy routes with a twist
ending. More on these later.
This goes throughout the book, but it’s more jarring in the beginning; it is
the way the story is told as ‘Amelia this,’ ‘Amelia that’ even though the
scenes only involve one character or the other character is a male. It becomes
very distracting because of the number of times the name is thrown instead of
using she or her. I believe it would average at least three times per page. I
am also distracted by the description of Jack earlier as lanky and when he is
mentioned later in the book as lean. It would be fine as the two definitions
are close enough if it’s not mentioned too often. Other terms that bother me
are between ‘puppet’ and ‘clone.’ I love Sci-Fi, and the way these terms are
used as if they are the same confuses me. In the earlier scenes with Scarlet,
I’m sorry, but I have to repeat the word ‘distracting’ to read things like ‘angelic’
voice and ‘gorgeous’ eyes while they are in dire situations and not some
observations of someone about the character. But these are nitpicking, and they
most likely don’t distract others as much.
I prefer realistic fantasy, if that’s a thing. I wish there were a genre for
it. It’s like fantasy, but the plot, the problems that the characters face, and
the characters themselves are very much in line with reality. I devour The Song
of Ice and Fire with great interest and have no problem with big-sized books,
but this book makes me recall my experience watching the first Transformer
movie. I’d categorize it as pure fantasy, so maybe I am biased in my reading
experience because, as mentioned, I prefer the other kind of
fantasy, nevermind they both have a similar magical creature. It
starts well, and everything is intriguing enough. Still, unfortunately, I
can’t wait for it to end after the final fights that stretch over one hundred
pages, more or less, with repetitive dialogues. The fights are great and
well-written, but it takes one-fifth of the book, and I have to admit I don’t
care anymore since the outcome is obvious to me anyway. And there is a plethora
of action scenes before these final fights that already exhaust me.
Having said all that, pure fantasy readers might enjoy this book. The author
put a lot of effort into this, and there are a lot of unique and great scenes
for the theme that is probably quite saturated. The characters are done well;
we are introduced to plenty of them, and although some have fewer scenes than
they deserve, they are distinguishable enough. The fight scenes are creative
and well-written, and although I am not really taken by the ending, it has the
potential for more stories.
3.5 rounded up.
