Kaylen’s Rising (Author: Yves Robichaud)
Rating: 2/5
Before I get to the actual review, let me refer to a quote
from the book:
“Wow! That story
explains a lot about my parents!”
Please note that the word “wow” appears 15 times in this
115-page book. And that pretty much explains the general tone of the entire
book. But maybe I’m getting a little ahead of myself. First off, I had high
expectations from this book. Here’s the premise: A cave elf has the ability to
summon skeletons. That sounds pretty interesting, and it seems like it can
bring a lot of creative ideas. Unfortunately, there’s very little character
development, awkward writing and dialogue, and several clichés.
Maybe I should
expand on the overview a bit more. The title character, Kaylen, is a teenage
cave elf that’s been sheltered from the outside world by his parents. His
parents eventually let him go to school, where he isn’t the most popular
person. As it turns out, there’s a war between the cave elves and the humans,
and young recruits are being trained as warriors, healers, and magicians to
fight. Kaylen doesn’t seem to be able to do anything, until he discovers his
power to summon skeletons. Ok, so there doesn’t really seem to be anything
wrong. That’s because you haven’t seen the way the book is written. The book
has a bad habit of “telling, not showing”; most of the dialogue (see the above
quote) and overall writing tells the reader plainly what a character is feeling
or doing. It’s very distracting. The book opens with a fireball being blasted
at Kaylen, which is a great way to grab the reader’s attention, but then you
quickly realize that the one who fired the fireball is the clichéd “bully”
character, the character that pushes around the main character and has a bunch
of lackeys at his heels (though that does change a bit later).
Speaking of
characters, who are they? Well, without giving too much away, Kaylen is a sort
of blank slate. He’s someone who tries hard, but who’s been sheltered his
entire life, so everyone thinks he’s an idiot, yeah, yeah, you’ve heard it
before. Despite his flatness of character, I actually don’t mind him that much.
Again, I don’t want to give too much away, but he fails a lot, which for the
main character I think is kind of amusing. Next up is Turin, Kaylen’s best
friend. I really can’t say much about him, because besides having a very
strange sense of humor, he really didn’t leave an impact on me. You’ll feel a
lack of impact a lot in this book. Then we have Avery, the bully. Luckily, like
Kaylen, I don’t mind his presence that much. He does change a bit in the story,
and he’s one of the characters I remember the most of. There are some other
characters, but they’re more like the dwarves from The Hobbit; you don’t really get to know them. There are the quirky
characters, the captain figure who thinks the main character is a, annoying
brat and tries to get rid of him as soon as possible, the obvious love
interests, the conspiring advisor (don’t worry, that’s not a spoiler), etc.
Unfortunately, none of them stick out, and they all kind of blend together, but
that might just be my inability to remember names.
So, what’s good about this book? Well, to be honest, it’s
kind of set up like a Final Fantasy game. There are random encounters, “boss
monsters”, the enchanted items, the learning of new magic techniques, the
travelling troupe...if you’re familiar with the traditional RPG games, the book
does provide a sense of familiarity. Also, most of the battle scenes are pretty
decent.
Overall, Kaylen’s
Rising isn’t technically a good book. The writing is very awkward, the
characters are pretty forgettable, and the pacing is way too fast. But I have
to say that I did enjoy parts of it, mostly the fighting scenes. And I will
admit, there have been books in the Young Adult genre that I have been bored
with that have been popular (*cough* Heroes of Olympus *cough*), so maybe it’ll
be popular. But for me, it just didn’t make the cut.
Book Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/KaylensRising
Author's Website: http://yvesrobichaud.com/
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