Review: Grieving Gold by Daniel McDaniel (The Luminocity Seed #1)
In a new and refreshing take on the genre, Grieving Gold is an all new epic fantasy with notes of sci-fi and horror set an ancient Aztec inspired world. It offers a complex and intriguing blood magic system and a world of darkness and shadow with the sun gods high above and creatures that live below in the dark.
The book has many POVs (which tbh can make things confusing and prevents readers from really connecting with the characters), but the true main character of the story is Lax, who is our classic lovable thief, but with the power of lies. I take into consideration the fact that this is the first book in a potentially very long series, so a lot of the book is setup, letting us get to know the characters and learn about the world. In my opinion, first books are generally not the strongest in a series due to all the worldbuilding needed, so I can forgive the book for being a little confusing and hard to get into at times.
While this is an intriguing premise, and certainly show promise for the future of the series, the execution and writing hold the story back from being truly brilliant. There were some glaring mistakes in the writing, even in the first chapter, which made it made it difficult to really get into the story. The author seems to really, really love using similes (particularly describing the buildings as being "like fingers" which felt weird) which took me out of the story every time. There were points where similes were being used in nearly every paragraph. This made it difficult to read, despite my interest in the world and characters.
Rating: 3 stars. Fantastic worldbuilding, held back by the writing
*Thank you to NetGalley for a copy of Grieving Gold in exchange for an honest review*
