Book Review - THE FAILURES by Benjamin Liar

 

(Title: The Failures / Author: Benjamin Liar / Publisher DAW / Publication Date: July 2, 2024 / Total Pages: 544)

Back Cover Blurb

In an unparalleled blend of apocalyptic science fiction and epic fantasy akin to masterpieces like Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, N.K. Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy, and David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, debut author Benjamin Liar presents the first gripping installment of The Wanderlands trilogy. The vast machine-like expanse of the Wanderlands, crafted by long-lost gods, is teetering on the brink of eternal darkness. Amidst the decaying behemoth, a diverse group of heroes, driven by prophetic dreams, embark on a perilous journey. Their mission? To mend their crumbling world - or witness its irrevocable end.

Benjamin Liar masterfully weaves intricate tales across time and space. With unique world-building, this tale plunges readers into a mechanical planet-sized realm abandoned by its divine creators. It's a tale of second chances and redemption, for those heroes have once tried - and failed - to salvage their home. Now, they're presented with another shot at salvation or doom.

Review

By all rights I SHOULD have loved this book, I SHOULD have turned the final page and shouted from the highest mountain about how much it wowed me, I SHOULD have been totally sucked into this story because the description reads like the blueprint to the perfect book that was written especially for my taste. And yet...none of these things unfortunately ended up happening. There was nobody who was more excited to jump into this book based on the summary, but ultimately for a variety of reasons, this was one of my more disappointing reads that left me longing for what might have been.

The first thing that stuck out for me was my feeling that every character that I encountered was kind of "too cool for the room" and over-the-top edgy. Don't get me wrong, I love edgy. Joe Abercrombie's First Law trilogy is overflowing with edgy characters and it's a top 3 fantasy series for me. But to me it was almost like the characters were edgy for edgy's sake. It didn't ever really seem natural and was quite distracting at times if I'm being completely honest.

Another aspect that I had a difficult time with is this is a truly ambitious world and the worldbuilding was almost too unwieldy with lots of ideas, technology, mythology, you name it. I felt like it lacked some focus and almost with every chapter I was confronted with another mind-blowing creation that I had to try to wrap my head around. It was hard to actually hunker down and focus on the overall story and I actually had to put the book down many times, which is never a good thing when you are expecting to get sucked into a great story.

Not everything was bad, I thought that Benjamin Liar did have some shining moments of action and there were a couple of times when I thought, okay this is where I'm really going to connect with this story and all the rocky parts I experienced up to this point will begin to smooth. I'm sad to say that didn't happen and it took every bit of discipline I had to make myself finish.

I suspect that this book will appeal to a large segment of readers. In the end though, this just wasn't for me personally and that's okay. Not every book is going to be a hit and I just didn't enjoy this as much as I initially thought I would. On to the next one!

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