Doesn't Quite Live Up To Promise

Powerless: The Synthesis
Jason Letts
Powerless Books (2010) PDF format, 228 pages
Rated 3 stars of 5 possible

Powerless: The Synthesis is the first of a new YA fantasy-adventure series, and is apparently also the author's first book. Mira Ipswich is 15 years old and tired of being kept at home by her overly protective parents. She wants to go out into the mist and find out what life is like on the outside. But Mira lacks one thing everyone else has and that lack makes her different than everyone else, and vulnerable as well.

Powerless has a nice balance of dialogue and description, well-developed characters of the kind you love and the kind you love to hate, and an interesting plot. I liked the story and can't wait for the next book to see what happens with Mira and her friends and family... but I hope to see some improvement in the writing too.

Some parts of the story aren't as well thought out as might be the case. For instance, an incident in chapter nine seems to happen without enough foreshadowing and hits the reader like one of the rocks thrown by a supporting character in a later chapter... I won't say which incident as I like to keep my reviews as spoiler-free as possible in case someone is reading the review prior to having read the book. Additionally, Mira's class ranking changed dramatically from the beginning of the school year to the end... which stretched my suspension of disbelief, perhaps just a little too much given that she started 9 years behind the other students and so was not as prepared as her fourteen class mates...

Also as mentioned by at least one other reviewer, the young teens of Mira's class sometimes act younger than they are.  I won't say that makes the story less appealing to the targeted age group, but having the teens act a bit more mature certainly wouldn't hurt anything. The other thing I noticed which distracted me from the story some is that there are occasional errors of a typographical nature scattered throughout the book... Errors such as these really should be corrected prior to publication. So, two stars deducted for the flaws mentioned.

I'll make a note here for those bound to disagree with my rating of this book. My ratings are based solely on the quality of the writing: plot, characterization, (and if reviewing a finished copy) grammar, spelling, factual or other types of errors noted in a book will all count for or against the rating of a particular book.  The author's ethical conduct and/or political views have no place in a review, as far as I am concerned, so I don't even take them into consideration. I am capable of evaluating the writing without agreeing or disagreeing with the author's ethics and politics.

I received the PDF of this book free from the author via LibraryThing Member Giveaways in exchange for this review. This review was simultaneously published on Dragon Views, LibraryThing, YABooks Central, and Amazon.com