1 out of 4 stars
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Never in my 25 years have I come across a book that had such great potential, but overshot it so much that it made me cry in frustration. I was really looking forward to reading Chaning Masks, but as soon as I got to the second chapter I wanted to tear my hair out. I hated this book so much and I seriously hope the author re-writes it properly. Why? I’m getting to that part.
The story is about a man in his early thirties that is a Warlock in his world that suddenly gets transported to another parallel world into a child’s body. In this world set in a fudual like era in Tokyo he must fight for his place among young teenage heirs and heiresses, and to protect his secret that he is older and wiser than he looks, not to mention not from that world. In the day he juggles being a normal teenage boy but at night he has his priorities as a theif making a name for himself. Sounds like a legit story and the author Nicholas Metelsky really had me sold on it in the book summary.
I’ll first start off by what I liked about it. The prologue alone was absolutely amazing, i’ve never read one like it. It was such a pleasant surprise that I found myself chuckling in pleasure. Then I get to the story and my initial pleasure turns to utter confusion and pure frustration at both the author and the story. The prologue preps your mind for the launch into the other realm, but when you get to the very first chapter of the story your mind screams out in confusion. Between an amazing start and then a complete mind f*ck tumble of a mess, your thrown into a chaotic world of questions. It took me more than once to read the very first page. Just to wrap my mind around where the author was at, and where he wanted our minds to settle down to.
First off the author should have wrote more of a story before the actually story. He needed to clearly state where things were at, by the time you read the prologue and were ready for the first chapter. Your reading the first chapter and the entire time its like your missing something big, so big that you keep reading in the hopes it gets cleared up. It doesn’t. In fact it gets worse. When you come to the first flashback you don’t even know it is one. Once you figure it out, by reading the dang page several times, the author gives you a teasing hint of the past world that the main character is from, but does not go into any detail what so ever. So your stuck with the knowledge that the man is already in the next world in his new body, and that there is an insane part of the story missing from the get go. When the author begins to throw in terms and words like you know what they are, and then rambles through them, your thinking okay hopefully he will describe all this later on right? Nope wrong again. Between all that and the fact you can’t tell who is talking to who most of the time, and the main characters inner thoughts to his outer thoughts are so intertwined it doesn’t make sense, this entire book was a mess.
I give this story a 1 out of 4 stars. Truth be told I wouldn’t even give this book a rating, it was that bad. However like I mentioned it had potential. The author should have first wrote a few pages of terms and deffinitions, so that when you came across them in the story you knew what they were, what was going on, and could follow the story more smoothly. He should have also included more detail in his flashbacks, more about the past and what led up to his current position. Instead of rambling through it making us wonder when he was going to reveal anything. I think what made me read this to the very confusing end was the fact of that hidden potential and the questions that I hoped would be answered. Alas it ended as it began with utter confusion. This book could be so much better, but as is, it’s not worth the read at all.
******
Changing Masks
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