As a huge James Rollins fan, this is a hard one to get through. Maybe why I avoided having to write a review on it for so long. Here we go…
     I really enjoy all of Rollin’s stories. From his crime fighting, secret service-like series, Sigma, to one off books where someone goes somewhere crazy and experiences crazy mutated creatures… I’ve really loved them all. I thought he could do no wrong. So when he announced he was doing another series completely different than what he’s been doing lately, I was excited. I preordered and paid more than the price that is listed on the book! (ha)

In the end though… this book was just off for me. I’m not sure but it felt like a forced fantasy novel. Like an author who didn’t really understand what the fantasy genre is? Which is weird and when I say that, I can feel myself feeling like I’m not making any sense. Here is an example… The way he used ‘mother’ and ‘father’ .. which were basically just the ‘sun’ and ‘moon’. The earth turns, the earth rotates… I mean it was all very real life stuff he just renamed. I don’t know why that specific example really stuck out for me, but it just nagged in the back of my head the whole time like, what is this?
    The big Achilles heel though was the actual writing itself. It made the book almost unreadable. The way the author mimicked Tolkien and Martin was too much. It was a poorly done impression. Before I even got to the author’s note where he stated that these authors really influenced him, I was seeing the words jumble across the page as if someone was forging a book by these two great authors. It was a knock and not a good one. It was unnatural, awkward and overall made it very uncomfortable to even read.
     I also had a hard time enjoying all the characters. When a POV switched to another character and story line I felt myself checking to see how long until we could switch to someone else’s POV.
    Overall, this one just wasn’t for me. I won’t be picking up the next in the series. I might need a break from this author for awhile because the last couple books haven’t been giving me the ‘feels’ like they normally do. This was a hard review for me to write as a loyal reader with almost a shrine-like collection of his books, so I’m going to leave it here for now. 
    What did you think? Let me know in the comments below.