Midnight’s Twins By Holly Race | Book Review

Hey Guys! It is Max here and I will be reviewing Midnight’s Twins By Holly Race today! I would like to thank Pansing for sending a copy of this novel to me! Before we dive into the review, I would like to bestow the prerequisites upon you.

Genre: Young Adult Portal Fantasy

Page count: 352

So, without further ado, let us get into the review section of this article!

Synopsis:

Fifteen-year-old Londoner Fern is about to uncover a place that she could not have imagined in all her wildest dreams. Annwn is the dream mirror of our world, a place where Dreamers walk in their slumber, their dreams playing out all around them. An enchanted, mysterious place that feeds our own world – as without dreams, without a place where our imaginations and minds can be nourished, what kind of humans would we be?

But Annwn is a place as full of dangers as it is wonders: it is a place where dreams can kill you. Annwn and its Dreamers are protected by an ancient order known as the Knights – and when Fern’s hated twin Ollie is chosen to join their ranks, Fern will have to do whatever she can to prove she is one of them too.

But the world Fern discovers in Annwn, in this dream mirror of her London, is a fragile one, threatened by vicious nightmares. Nightmares that are harder and harder for the Knights to defeat. Something dark is jeopardising the peace and stability of Annwn, something that must be rooted out at all costs. And gradually, Fern realises that the danger lurking inside our sleep is more insidious and terrifying than any nightmare. Because if you can influence someone’s dreams, you can control their thoughts.

Review:

In this novel, we are introduced to the lead character christened Fern King, her twin brother – Ollie King, their common friend – Ramesh and a few other friends. Ramesh and a few other friends that I could not for the life of me remember are forgettable characters. I did not, in any way, find myself getting attached to them and I wish the author would craft multiple layers upon these characters because I did not even care when one is hurt or the other is dead. Their characterizations do not feel authentic to me, it felt like they were just there to propel the plot forward.

However, Fern and Ollie do indeed feel like people you would meet in real life. Ollie is such an asshole and every time he appears in a scene, I will get extremely annoyed because he bullies his sister with his crowd of “friends” which leads to her getting tied to a tree and the fire searing her skin. Well, why did they do that? Because she has red eyes and they think she is a witch. What the actual fuck. I did not like that the author tries to redeem Ollie as a character because how can you redeem someone who almost killed his own sister albeit, accidentally letting the fire go?

With all that egregious stuff done to her, Fern tries to distance herself from humans in general because she does not want anyone to use her or bully her so she keeps to herself most of the time. She becomes spiteful of her brother, jealous of the discrepancies between the love her father gives her brother and her (their mother is dead), grows extremely dubious to anyone who treats her well and she also becomes duplicitous in every way possible to survive. I found myself rooting for Fern with my whole being because she is a believable character and she exudes such confidence when she is proficient at something and ugh, I just loved her as a character in this novel.

If you know, portal fantasy has been gone for quite some time and now, it is making a comeback with a few well-known novels like Burn By Patrick Ness and I have not had any fluke with portal fantasy ever since I finished the Daughter of Smoke and Bones trilogy 3 years back and this is no exception. Although the world is fascinating, it is not well-built. It lacks flavor and the details that the author has provided are not intricate enough for me to picture it in my mind. I am still confused by the power that Fern wields called –inspyre – and how did that power make an army of people that cannot feel fear? In addition, the world – Annwn – does not make sense on several occasions in the novel. For example, why didn’t the old buildings change in shape in Annwn when the landscape is already different in Ithr (our world), are they not meant to coexist? Also, how did the villain build his own “fortress” using his inspyre when the landscape in Annwn still lingers in the past?

Moreover, I kind of wish the author would have lingered a little longer on the school-setting section of the novel and let the readers learn more of the world through the eyes of the protagonist because it seems a little too soon for them to go out into the world to fight all those nightmares.

However, this novel is well-paced. It does not drag the story or take the story through a tantivy speed. With that, it is engaging and it makes you flip through the pages in expeditiously and before you know it, you have already reached the final pages of the novel.

The writing style for this novel does not have anything special but it is definitely readable and it has more “showing than telling” which I absolutely enjoyed.

In conclusion, I am proffering this novel with a rating of 45% (E). I wish some things are done differently in this novel and if the things I described in my review are right up to your alley, you should give it a try. If it is not, I would not recommend it.

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This is the end of my review for Midnight’s Twin By Holly Race! I hope you all enjoyed it and follow me with your email/Wordpress account to get notifications when I post a new article! Bye!

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