Helpful Score: 1
ROUGH MAGIC is a poorly written and narratively overdone tale, difficult to swallow because it tried to tell four characters' stories in the course of about 200 pages. The story moves over several decades and lifetimes; as a result, important, character-defining events are merely glimpses that poke in and out within one chapter, never to be mentioned again. Additionally, nearly every chapter tends to awkwardly explain in flashbacks the life-altering events that occurred since the last chapter. This skipping-stone method of narration ensures that we readers never feel as if there is any action going on, since everything important seems to have happened invisibly between the chapters!
That being said, the world that ROUGH MAGIC creates for us is a rough-and-tumble, fantastical one. I enjoyed the idea of the island's wildness being almost a character in itself. Unfortunately, ROUGH MAGIC was not very successful in telling a clear and intelligible story, but that doesn't mean it's without its attractions. Readers and writers may do well in considering this book as an example of what not to do with one's own writing: overly ambitious and directionless saga-stories will drag a perfectly intriguing idea down to its death.
That being said, the world that ROUGH MAGIC creates for us is a rough-and-tumble, fantastical one. I enjoyed the idea of the island's wildness being almost a character in itself. Unfortunately, ROUGH MAGIC was not very successful in telling a clear and intelligible story, but that doesn't mean it's without its attractions. Readers and writers may do well in considering this book as an example of what not to do with one's own writing: overly ambitious and directionless saga-stories will drag a perfectly intriguing idea down to its death.
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