Rebellion Under the Stars, by Katherine Marie, is another recent read for me. It's a story of adventure, rebellion, loyalty, and perseverance. The kingdom of Zaracor is about to be attacked by a mysterious and relentless force, led by a man driven by ambition and greed. Help must come if Zaracor is to survive the rebellion - and help is far away. An attack will soon be launched on the City, the home of the King of Zaracor.
A varied cast of characters find themselves burdened with the task of saving the kingdom. Selena, a commoner girl, and her close friend, Prince Johnathan of Zaracor. Master Jolan, a man with many secrets, but still the closest and wisest advisor of King Charles of Zaracor. MacKenna, the daughter of a blacksmith, who has strange and frightening visions of the future. And Marzena, a powerful and mysterious woman who lives in the forest just outside the City. Working together and separately, its up to them to find out how Zaracor can be saved - or if that's even possible.
Rebellion Under the Stars is a brand new book that was just published in December of 2014. In fact, it was self-published by Katherine Marie, a blogger and writer and now new author that I follow. The fact that Rebellion Under the Stars is a self-published book, and also the first book Katherine Marie has ever had published makes it more of a challenge to review than other books I've done, but I'll give it my best shot.
First of all, as a self-published book, it was better than some I've seen. Often I find self-published authors to have poor spelling and punctuation or tons of typos which aren't in books published and edited by big companies. Also, I've read books where the self-published author was too lazy to make sure their formatting was consistent throughout the book - sometimes words are spaced widely in one place and indented from the page in another place. This is just confusing to read and jolts the reader out of the story. Rebellion Under the Stars had none of these problems - there were two or three typos, but formatting was consistent.
One other thing I noticed is that there were no chapter breaks. Instead, there would be a bit of a page break when the story switched narrators or an important event was completed. This was a bit exhausting to read after a while. I found that when I didn't have chapter breaks to mark my progress, the story would drag a little bit. Still, it was an interesting choice and gives the book a distinctive voice. But as self-published authors go, Katherine Marie did a good job making sure the outward appearance of Rebellion Under the Stars wasn't disruptive to the story.
As for the story, I have a few comments to make about that, both positive and negative. The things that bugged me about Rebellion Under the Stars was partly the big cast of characters. In most books, there are lots of named characters, and sometimes more than one narrator. I've read books with as many as four narrators, and that can be hard to cope with. Rebellion Under the Stars had seven or more narrators, I may have forgotten one or two. With that many narrators, you have to use a somewhat omniscient style of writing, otherwise you risk blending the characters together in the story. Unfortunately, in a story the length of Rebellion, I wasn't able to connect with any of the characters very well, which is important. Primarily, though, my difficulty was that I couldn't decide who the main character was out of so many narrators.
Also, each of these characters has their own story, and with seven or more to deal with, I as a reader wasn't able to discover much about their histories. By the end of the book, I was left with tantalizing hints of secrets and hidden pasts for several of the characters, but nothing concrete. However, Katherine Marie has talked about a sequel/prequel for Rebellion, so maybe another book will clear that up.
The positive things I have to say about Rebellion Under the Stars have to do with the writing style of Katherine Marie herself, not specifically Rebellion. I enjoyed the story, don't get me wrong, but I just felt like there wasn't enough for it to be special to me. Her writing style and grasp of story mechanics: characters, scenes, dialogue, action - all the stuff that make a story stick with you - were good. She wrote scenes that made sense, she knew what her setting was and could describe it and the characters inside it. And although I doubt she had a professional editor paid to edit her story, Rebellion shows that she put the time and effort into editing herself and did a good job. If she writes more stories, which I hope she does, I'd definitely be willing to try them.
In the end, Rebellion was a pretty good book from a first-time self-published author. It shows bravery from the author to be willing to make herself the face of her book, and not some publishing company, since she'll have to do all the footwork to get her book known (though maybe my reviews and other reader responses will help). I thought the story was interesting, and though it could have used a bit of tightening to clearly bring the plot together and showcase the characters ideally, it was a nice debut novel. Good job, Katherine Marie!
Link to author website: https://kmariecreativity.wordpress.com/
Links to Rebellion Under the Stars page: https://kmariecreativity.wordpress.com/rebellion/
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