Year One: Chronicles of The One, Book 1 (Chronicles of The One, 1)

I read this book during the beginning of Covid (2020). Why did I do that to myself I have no idea! I could not put this book down.

What a strange book, and not in a good way. It's like the author suddenly decided to turn hip and appease the YA masses but had no idea what elves, or witches, or faeries really are. Just bunched them together into "magical YA!" category and slapped them into her book. None of this makes sense, after a pandemic breaks out due to the first family in the story killing a bird, about 80% of the worlds population dies and the rest are these immune super powered humans-turned-to-magical-creatures.

It reads very strangely, because the book switches gears several times throughout the story, theres also these out of place bible quotes for each sub-section of the book. It doesn't help that its written poorly, some of the sentences literally repeat themselves one after another and its not structured properly. You can't tell who is talking, at some point there are so many characters you don't know who is who. For a minute, it gave me Walking Dead vibes, then it was back to boiling cups of coffee, taking inventory of supplies, going on hunts to the store, being shot at. These scenes repeat themselves endlessly through the book, making about 60% of the content, basically I skipped through so many of these I was left with almost no-book to read. It doesn't help that all these characters get introduced, forgotten about or killed.

Its just a very weird forced attempt at being a modern book and appeasing to dystopian-fantasy-survival fanbases. But it's forced, weirdly meshed together that it doesn't flow, nothing is explained, theres so much "suffering" and all conversations are literally empty and the same sameness. So much chatter between characters that just acts as filler, so many cozy days cooking and chopping, and gardening etc etc etc.

This is my second Nora Roberts book, the first one having similar problems and being boring. I dnf'd the first one, I stuck this one out because I got a paperback.

I conclude Nora Roberts is not for me, I wont be attempting this author again in a long while. Just a lot of rambling in her books and a lot of 'relaxing' descriptions of everyday scenes. Her books are very boring and drawn out without much plot, theres an "idea" of a plot, but no actual plot.

Pretty much devoured this book as quick as I could flip the pages! I didn’t realise it wasn’t a romance when I first got it (not in the traditional sense but of course there are romance elements in it), not caught on pretty quickly that this one was very different from her other works! I thoroughly enjoyed it, loved lots of the characters she brought together, and am excited to see what happens next. Her writing and pacing ramp up the adrenaline, especially in the first half of the book, but the core parts story itself aren’t going to be unfamiliar for those who read any post apocalyptic fiction. So while I enjoyed the wild ride, I can’t say that anything shocked or surprised me. But dang, what a roller coaster... Onto book 2, please!