Review: Indelible, by Dawn Metcalf

Some things are permanent.

Indelible.

And they cannot be changed back.

Joy Malone learns this the night she sees a stranger with all-black eyes across a crowded room—right before the mystery boy tries to cut out her eye. Instead, the wound accidentally marks her as property of Indelible Ink, and this dangerous mistake thrusts Joy into an incomprehensible world—a world of monsters at the window, glowing girls on the doorstep, and a life that will never be the same.

Now, Joy must pretend to be Ink’s chosen one—his helper, his love, his something for the foreseeable future...and failure to be convincing means a painful death for them both. Swept into a world of monsters, illusion, immortal honor and revenge, Joy discovers that sometimes, there are no mistakes.

Somewhere between reality and myth lies… -Goodreads

My Rating: 2/5 stars

I received this book in exchange for an honest review

If you want a lesson on how not to write a decent fantasy book, refer to Indelible. This book has everything I don’t want in a book; it barely has the minimum basics. It will be near impossible to improve this series; if the foundation is not sturdy, the rest of the series will most likely suck.

Where is the plot? Where is the structure? I have no idea why most of the things occurred, because the author paid minimal heed to the essentials of her world. It’s only been a week since I've finished Indelible, and the only thing I can recall is that Ink doesn't have fingernails. That’s pretty sad.

You know, there’s this little thing called world building, and it would've helped so much if the author expanded on the world and had paid more attention to this aspect instead of describing minute things I could care less about as a reader, like a stain on Joy’s textbook (yes, that was brought up once). In order to have a compelling fantasy, it is very important to build up the world and make us visualize it in our heads. If the author can’t do that, then he/she shouldn't be writing a fantasy novel in the first place.

There is very little than annoys me more in a book than cheesy writing. Coming in a close second is the unnecessary overuse of exclamation marks that is not in dialogue. Combine these two, and I’m very annoyed. All it shows is that the writing is very juvenile and childish.

Examples?

“She didn’t want to think. She felt better already!”

“It wasn’t bad!”

“Girls’ Self Defense 103: Never give up!”

“She wasn’t a prisoner! This was her house!”

THE PAIN.

Overall, the writing was a mess. It had no flow whatsoever, and describing every single atom that exists in a room is not going to improve the writing.

Like I said, the plot lacked structure. I felt like the author was just making up this stuff as I progressed through the story. I’m still confused about everything that happened. There was no leading up to the conflict; it came out of nowhere, and frankly, made little sense at all.

On to Joy, the main character. Joy, oh Joy, you were not a joy to read about. This girl is the epitome of idiocy. She has no sense of self-preservation - not because she’s overly heroic or anything, but because she’s stupid. At one point, a random stranger came up to her and asked her if she knew about some bizarre thing (that she clearly knew nothing about). Naturally, she said that she did know what he was talking about (??). I don’t even know why.

"Excuse me," he continued. "Did you see the Kodama?"
"Yes," she said.”

HMM. I WONDER WHAT GOT YOU INTO THIS MESS IN THE FIRST PLACE, JOY!

Another admirable quality of Joy is her clinginess. I never understood Ink and Joy’s relationship; it was so awkward that cringing came as second nature to me during my reading experience. At one point she also wanted Ink to visit her “right now” when he was clearly using all his energy to save his sister and could barely handle the exhaustion. But NO! His sister's suffering is SO much less important than seeing his girlfriend! (Not that I’m defending Ink, or sympathizing with him, I’m just pointing out a fact.)

Completely ignored in Indelible is characterization. I don’t give a crap about any of the characters in the book. I’m at a loss for what else to say because there is absolutely no character development to begin with. This is probably one of the worst books in the characterization department, folks. I’m scratching my head trying to remember Joy’s best friend’s name…

Indelible’s got the whole package; bad writing, an unstructured plot, no character development, and no world-building. To top it all off, the book failed to connect with me on an emotional level, and I couldn't wait to finish this book.

*sigh* Nothing to see here, guys.