Eternal: Pound of Flesh Review
This is my first review, and it will contain spoilers. I hope to get better reviewing as time goes by, so please bear with me as I get used to this.
Eternal: Pound of Flesh by Nadia Valentine — 2/5 Star
Again, this will have spoilers! You have been warned. :)
I picked up this novel, excited from the blurb. A woman escaping a pre-arranged marriage, wanting to live her life her own way and make her own decisions, not have her father make them for her. And to add to it, the mystery of a mysterious manor, a mysterious Duke. It sure got my attention.
Before the review itself, let me list things I did enjoy about the novel.
Mysterious Manor (Should have been explored better! It is hundreds of years old, what are its secrets? Both inside the manor, and out!)
The Demonic/Vampire Duke was -very- close to being a great character, but he snarled, and growled, and hissed, way too much. Still, he was almost there. I did enjoy him, for the most part.
The setting!
Now to take me to the review.
The book fell flat many times over. It begins with the main character, Matami, arriving at the Manor of the mysterious Duke. She figures it’s a good place to hide from her father and will do anything needed to stay under the Duke’s employment. From there, the book falls apart. You spend about 45-50% of the novel in the manor where nothing happens. Every chapter is another scene which adds nothing to the novel. There is the occasional small element to push the plot forward, but just barely. It is basically half a novel of sex, blood sucking, and flesh eating. It was extremely hard to make it through that.
Then it seems the novel will get exiting. They leave the manor to go discover why the Duke was poisoned and turned into a demon. A friend joins them out of nowhere. The main character can’t stop thinking of how she wants to have sex with this new character, too. Which goes against the very premise of the character herself set earlier in the novel before she goes sex-crazy for no apparent reason. I will keep this short. They reach a cabin, where suddenly Matami is a cold blooded killer, killing guards of her father at will. Unrealistic, out of nowhere, no build up, no training. No remorse. She just killed three humans and feels absolutely nothing.
Oh, did I mention she was raped by a demon, and acted like nothing happened afterwards and how it was a great time and she wished it happened again? Also lost her eye during it (Which healed, conveniently), but that’s okay. Still friendly and okay with her rapist.
Her father finally catches up to her, only for the two demons to save her from him almost instantly. That’s okay, but then, about 80% of the way through the novel, they magically stumble onto the cabin of a witch who tells them vague things about their future and souls. Who is she? Why are they there now? Why didn’t they visit her earlier? I guess since the Duke got his demonic wing injured, it was convenient to have a witch who could bestow knowledge on them out of nowhere. The witch could have been mentioned earlier, hinted at, so the novel wouldn’t add a new character near the end and ditch her shortly after.
And well, that’s it. Just when the action started, the chase, her father finally catching up to her - it ends. No reward for the reader, no satisfaction.
The Duke simply eats her heart to save himself and she is reincarnated years later and received a gift from him in her office as CEO of a company.
The novel -could- have been decent with better execution. The premise of it is good, but the execution was not. The reader needs a reason to read a novel, to feel satisfied at the end. With Eternal: Pound of Flesh, you simply do not have that. I skimmed the last 15% of the novel. A reader should never skim the most exciting parts.
I’ve given the novel 2 out of 5 stars because while the story was all over the place and unrewarding, the writing itself was decent. There are sparks there, and with more proper care in editing, maybe a second set of eyes, the writing would shine through a lot better. It’s just missing that smallest amount of editing to tighten sentences, not have paragraphs that carry on too long, nor to constantly repeat the same things the entire novel. In editing, the author would find how to write dialogue. I don’t mean the dialogue itself, though that did drag, I mean the formatting of it. I will give an example from the novel, and how it should read.
From the novel: “You speak English.” The man said. “I’m here for work.” She said.
How it should be: “You speak English,” the man said. “I’m here for work,” she said.
Now I’m not the best in English at times, and maybe where the author is from that’s the correct way to format dialogue or perhaps it was a style choice. And so if that is the reason for it, I apologize.
And that is the end of my first ever review of an indie novel! I hope to get better at them, and any suggestions are welcomed! If you’d like your novel reviewed, tag me on Twitter at S_D_Donovan and I will get to it, eventually. I’ve got a pretty big TBR list as of now :).
