Review: Equilíbrio 1 - O Despertar by Iria Alexandra Cardoso

I read this book for the presentation The Mystery of Writing, which I did with four more authors! I already have the review for two of those books on the blog.

Irmandade

Ameaçade um Anjo

I will soon (hopefully) make a post about the event what happen and my thoughts on the subject!

Let’s go to the book!

This book was provided by the author (Iria Cardoso) for review! Balance 1 – Awakening is a Portuguese book and isn’t unfortunately available in any other language right now.

Equilíbrio (portuguese tittle) is the story of Alexandra one of the Guardians – people who have a special power and must find Saphyrum – who has a very powerful gift that might destroy her if she is not careful.

Alex can feel the world, can feel emotions from other people and that turns her cold – literally – but doesn’t stop her from having friends and enjoying her life as a college student.

Guardians have a mortal enemy and that’s the Robbers, also blessed with abilities, that are keen on getting their hands on Saphyrum to do evil stuff.

I found this story a nice breath of air.

The most positive thing on this story is the family dynamic, Iria does a great job making you believe this characters are a very close family that worries and loves each other very deeply. It’s so unusual for fantasy books to have entire families alive and being an active part of the plot!

I loved it!

What I didn’t love was the way the book was written…

This book is written in a completely impersonal third person that kept me so confused. I honestly had to re-read several paragraphs because I did not understand what the hell was happening. The narrator is constantly shifting from describe what one character is feeling to the other in one sentence, and it might be me – I usually read third person in POVs’ books – but I found it to so confusing it completely killed the story. I was so confused guys! It took me twice the time to read this book because I had to re-read so many sentences to understand what the author wanted to say.

I really liked the romance in this book, not instalove which I appreciate but also not that well explored. Once again, the writing, the most important moments of the story, those moments you really want to read and picture in your mind Iria just jumps over it , just slightly scraping the surface of what should be a really intense scene. I talked to the author and she said she liked to leave somethings to the imagination, if that’s your thing and you like books with very little details you will enjoy it, I, on the other hand, like to read a really good fighting scene and feel the suffering of the main character and see what’s happening. It doesn’t happen in this book.

Unfortunately.

It does, however, bring a really nice view to the life as a young-adult, going to college and fighting for good grades. Even if sometimes I had the feeling the author made too much of an effort to make Equilíbrio her life when she had that age.

As someone who’s on her second year in college I could relate which made the book more realistic.

Something I think should be improved is the villain. We don’t get much information about it, I don’t know if that’s the point, because we know him, we know that he’s obsessed with Alex, so we have some information about him but we don’t know why he’s evil.

At last, I want to say this is strong start to a writing career, it has its pros and cons but an overall nice read. Even nicer if you like books that have this kind of writing – which I do not, since I like feeling like I’m the character(s).

If you like fantasy and college and family and love give it a try!

Rating: 4 stars