Book Review: Sapphire Eruption

As part of Indie April, I had picked up the Sapphire Eruption. The cover was really alluring and the premise interesting. So how is it? Here is my review

As of the time of writing, my rating would be 7 out of 10. If the issues I raise get resolved, then it can easily be an 8 or 9. I did enjoy reading it after getting past a few of early tropes. And I look forward to learning what happens next.

To start off, is this the next Avatar: the Last Airbender? I think having that comparison would only serve to disappoint. This story is good on its own and that is good enough for me.

For me, the story doesn't start until about chapter 7, after we get over a few tropes, retreading, and meeting the first companion. However, past that it's full speed ahead for multiple ships.

The many characters are fully realized and have their own motives, personalities, and story. The book is long, but packed with these parallel character-driven threads. This makes the world feel deep and complex and is great. At the same time, it's also one of the areas that requires extra work from the reader to mine the gem of the story.

There are at least 11 point-of-views we hop around in the story. Sometimes this head-hopping happens mid-paragraph, but it also happens mid-sentence. It’s not tied to point of views too. Sometimes the general subject changes with no warning, resulting in having to re-read the same paragraph to sort things out.

While most point-of-views are isolated in chapters with a maximum of maybe 3, the structuring can shift to a parallel thread right at the climax of another arc and with so many stories going on, I didn’t know when I could expect to finish the arc. At least once I learned the chapter I was reading was unrelated to the previous chapter after almost finishing it.

There are other areas that could use some polishing. In addition to grammar mistakes and typos, there is also a bit of repetition of information. Sometimes this occurs with adjacent paragraphs. The times where it occurs in separate chapters is more forgivable as it serves as a reminder, which might be nice if you read the book only a few chapters at a time, which is my recommendation.

In terms of objectionable content, there was one f-bomb which disappointed me because the author did such a great job avoiding it in the rest of the book. Curses that we see were built from the world. Other times we are simply told the person is cursing and it’s fine. The other piece that really sits in my mind is how the one woman who is described as ugly is disrespected and used for “laughs”. While it’s realistic and treated fairly minor, it still left a bad taste for me, perhaps mostly because there is only one woman called out as unattractive.

Putting those issues aside, again I found the overall story good. There is a gem inside and if it didn’t require the extra work to enjoy it, I would have given this 4 stars out of 5. As an indie book, I think this serves as a benefit because the book can be edited to deal with the issues I’ve mentioned. In addition, when the next book comes out, it might be easier to decide if the ending of this book is a cliffhanger or not. Either way, I look forward to continuing to read this series.