Review: Unsouled (Cradle Book 1) by Will Wight
Lindon is born Unsouled, the one person in his family unable to use the magical Paths of the sacred arts. He uses every trick and technique he can borrow or steal to improve his life, but it seems he will never be able to join the ranks of the truly powerful.
Until the heavens descend and show him the future.
When Lindon becomes the only one who sees the approaching doom, he must leave his homeland to save it… and to see how far he can go by walking his own Path.
Cradle is now complete! This 12-book series begins here with Unsouled and concludes with Waybound.
I GOT THE BOOK ON KU. SPOILERS SPOILERS IN THE REVIEW BEWARE. SPOILERS
Review:
Dear Will Wight,
This book was recent pick in one of the book clubs I belong to. I did not get to go to the actual discussion but I finished the book. There are twelve books in the series and readers can find them on kindle unlimited. I am not planning to continue with the series, but of course your mileage may vary. The book’s setting features multiple clans in an imaginary place very likely inspired by Chinese martial arts novels (as the blurb to the whole series says if you will go to Amazon page for the complete series). I liked the setting, but this is probably the only thing I liked about the book and even with the setting I had many questions.
In essence the book is the story of the “underdog”, the boy who was deemed “Unsouled” by his clan, because prior to letting the kids study martial arts, they do stupid tests which show how much “madra” this child has (if I interpreted the test correctly) and what path of study the child should choose. You see the problem here, right? So right away this boy has tons of unnecessary obstacles before him and he nevertheless wants to be a martial artist because this is all the clan he lives in and neighborly clans do.
You would probably ask, but how do they actually survive, where they get food, and other necessities? I have no idea, I mean they look for some fruits and occasionally find them, but those fruits I think mostly help them study, make them stronger. I think trade with other clans is mentioned once or twice?
Mostly it is study and martial art tournaments I thought. So at some point the main character learns to shamelessly cheat to win some things and obviously we cannot blame him for that, since he is limited by the stupid test in what he can do and maybe I would have become more interested in the story and his journey, if the author not decided to show us REALLY early in the book that nothing is going to touch the main character ever.
Apparently there are some immortal beings watching this world (I do not know who they are and do not care – Angels? Watchers? Aliens?). So when, at one of the tournaments, danger strikes and main character and many other people in his village die, the amazingly perfect being decides to scan his future fate and decides that he has a lot of potential and she needs to resurrect him and other people and give him a chance to leave home and to create his own destiny and when he becomes super awesome she will come back for him and he will ascend to another world? State? Something?
I do not know and I do not care, I am sorry.
This was when the plot did me in. I am usually not interested in the story that plays out like a video game when hero gets a second life. It was at forty four percent.
I also wished I could have seen one character who was more than one dimensional in this book. I mean at the end the main character probably gained a second dimension to me (barely), but the rest never did.
I finished the book, I even cared a little for the main character at the end, but I am still so annoyed that I wasted my time with this story that I am going to give it a D
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I really liked your review which is interesting because I also read and enjoyed the entire Cradle series. I’m thinking about why I enjoyed it and stuck with it despite a pretty much forgone conclusion. I think the reason I did was because the series explored the concepts of heroics, heroism, worth/value, and right versus wrong, and looked beyond face value. These are favorite themes of mine. The writing isnt as elegant as in my favorite explorations of this, the curse of chalion, or the hands of the emperor, or the goblin emperor but those themes are present. Maybe the books hit you in the face with the idea that “grinding” aka relentless possibly boring work or practice is a key to victory or maybe improvement but I have often found that to be true. The books also portray that rising others up can be a path to reaching a goal althoughAgain heavy handedly.. I get why the book could be frustrating but for me worth finishing.
@Sue: Thank you so much for commenting. I very much appreciate your perspective. I know these books are quite popular. I think the main reason why it did not work for me is because I did not find the characters to be well drawn. In my opinion not a single character had any depth. Maybe the characters will show more depth in the next books. Just to be clear, I did finish the first book, I would not rate it otherwise. I just do not want to continue with the rest of the series.