Jan 31, 2015: I found Stone Burners to be engaging quickly on, beginning with a hero that appears to have had her memories largely erased and struggling to fill in the knowledge of her world from there. The main character, Olivia, is interesting and engaging, and both her adventures and the people she meets as the story goes on serve to pull the reader in, I found. There also seems to be a good balance of story exposition and action. It’s clear to me that the author spent a lot of time thinking about their world and how it came to be, which is admirable and makes for interesting reading.
On the flip side of that, however, my main critique of the story is the amount of backstory the author presents. It’s often presented (at least in the beginning of the story) in a sort of omniscient third-person way, and frankly, I found myself skimming a lot of it. I liked it a lot better later on when the author (although still sometimes falling into the third-person infodump) did more with allowing the environment to tell the story (e.g., through newspaper/television news stories), or allowing the characters to explain things to Olivia in their own way, whether or not they put things in a biased or unbiased way. Along with that, I’d recommend the author get a friend to provide beta reader services, since there were tense issues and occasional typos that sometimes interrupted the flow of reading.
In short, I found the story appealing and interesting, although I’d like to see the backstory information presented better, and probably used more judiciously. I think most readers of superhero fiction would like this story, and I recommend it to them.
4 of 4 members found this review helpful.
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