The Viridian Priestess

dnf at 74%

I just couldn't keep reading, I give up! This premise could have been fantastic. The introduction (aka 25%) mark was good, I might even say great! We have a priestess who is attempt to ascend and she is given ten opportunity through a mission with one of the realms in this universe. On the mission, she is accompanied by the mysterious, masked man called the 99th commander. WE DONT EVEN GET HIS REAL NAME (as far as I read).

My huge huge huge issue with this book was the world building was incredibly lacking. I loved the aspect of unique creatures and food we got but everything else was practically left up to the imagination. The character development had much to improve on. The relationships between the characters (friendship and romantic) felt incredibly forced and the depth we had of each character was surface level.

*Edit 2024:
I guess not having a star rating on a book means that others send aggressive DMs.

So my overall rating is 1.5/2 stars.

Initial review from 2023:

Let me first start with this:

1) I will not leave a star rating mark on Goodreads. But... If I were to give this book a rating it would be a low rating, but since it is a debut novel/indie published. The highest and lowest rating I will give is 3 stars.

2) I was recommended this book by a mutual friend in the book community because she saw it on TikTok and wanted my thoughts about it. Now, I do have to say that I have a thing about reading TikTok books because 90% of the time they are over-promoted and horrible in some way, shape, or form. Then there is that 10% chance that a TikTok book is a hidden gem.
However, with this book, This was not one of those hidden gems, but... It was not the worst TikTok book I have picked up.

3) If one is easily offended by negative reviews or low ratings then ignore this review. This is not for those people.

Let us finally begin the review.

The Vivian Priestess by Katrina Calandra

Worldbuilding:

sigh

When it comes to books with 350–400 pages, I do expect the said book to have a good amount of quality world-building. In my opinion, the world-building for The Vivian Priestess is lacking immensely. We have three worlds. Three... Yet, all the information we have about these three worlds is surface-level

I do understand that this is a debut book, and a second book is on its way. But... the lack of world-building almost made me DNF this book before 20%.

The pacing of the book/characters:

This is 100% a slow burn. It was so slow that it took me months to finish this book. However, when it came to the pacing of the characters and the relationships between them, it was rushed. This was confusing and almost gave me whiplash.

I also hate to say this, but every character was... forgettable. For me, I need my characters to have depth. And these characters didn't have much of that.
I could not connect to any of the characters on an emotional level. At times, I even found myself skimming an area of pointless monologue or speaking out loud for Ferren to shut up. However, the overall interactions between characters were okay.

As for growth and development, it was almost nonexistent, but I also did not expect this book to have it because, well... TikTok “romance” books. That is why I mentioned something about TikTok books earlier.

Writing:

I don't like criticizing this area because... Well. I stink in the grammar, spelling, and sentence structure areas. However, the writing reminded me of a rough draft before you send it to an editor. However, this is not the worst writing I have seen. The worst writing I have seen comes from a traditionally published book.

Smut:

sigh

Stuff starts to happen sometime around the 62%–70% mark for like 6–10 pages. It was very vanilla and boring. However, this could be a personal issue because I come from a place that reads dark romance.

There is an audience for this book, but I am not that audience.