BFIrving

Interesting, with pros and cons

Rebirth is an interesting story with an interesting premise. The protagonist is reborn into a fantasy world after being executed on our own. We follow his second life from birth to young adulthood and see how he begins to come to terms with his new surroundings and the strange situation he finds himself in. The writing style is strong and the author is able to draw you along and into the storey despite its faults, and it does have some faults for all it has a lot to recommend it.
I found the protagonist difficult to like. He takes an intense dislike to another character which is out of proportion to the reasons, leaving you wondering which of the two you would find the most irritating to be around (Both, was the conclusion I arrived at). The sex scenes came about at some really unlikely and inconvenient moments and tended to slow the storey down and defuse plot tension when it should have been building nicely. The female characters seem to be two-dimensional manic pixie dream girls and all seem far too eager to please the protagonist often on fairly flimsy grounds. That left me feeling the book had something of a teenage boy wish fulfilment theme going on and I found it difficult to take seriously.

The first half of the book was, for me, by far the most interesting and the second half seemed to slow right down with a great deal of procrastinating in situations that we are often told are time critical but which characters seem content to dawdle over.

That said the book has a lot to recommend it as well. The world building is quite good and we are given a window into a world that is both significantly different to ours and yet has a number of points of identifiable reference so we are never left feeling entirely out of our depth. That can be a difficult balance to strike. The author has clearly thought quite a bit about how magic would effect the world and has integrated it rather well, better than a lot of fantasy authors do. This lends the society of the new world a sense of authenticity.

The authors writing style is strong and although I spotted a number of errors I strongly suspect that there were fewer than in much of my own work. Weighing in at 570 pages though does make it something of a large book to take on so weigh the pros and cons.

Excellent story crafting

A first rate story and well crafted, the blend of horror and action worked very well indeed and had me turning page after page. When not actually reading it, I found myself thinking about it which is always a good sign.
There are quite a few grammatical and spell-checker errors but nothing another proof reading cant fix, don't let it out you off because the story is worth it and the ending is interesting.
The phrase 'The Brunette' is greatly overused as well but those are the only two quibbles I have in an otherwise very good read.
Do yourself a favour and read this story at your earliest convenience, it is worth it.