Shattered Souls by Kris RuhlerMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
I had to read several chapters of Shattered Souls before I came to various conclusions about it. I wondered, was it taking place on Earth, or another planet? And if on Earth what country is this in? I could not decide whether it was a fantasy novel or science fiction. As I do not care much for the fantasy genre a lot of the story became a bit tiring. Having always been fond of science fiction there were several points in the tale when it reminded me of Frank Herbert’s ‘Dune’ novels. But the problem for me about the fantasy theme was there were quite a few areas in Shattered Souls that reminded me of Tolkein’s novels. And then, some of the characters in it were like those in Mervyn Peake’s ‘Gormenghast’ series; these authors being my only two favourite writers of the fantasy genre.
When I came to the conclusion that it was definitely not a stand-alone novel, I realised that this particular book of Ruhler’s needed a prologue or introduction to give a new reader some idea of its intended genre, i.e. ‘fantasy sci-fi’. I had to find its blurb on line to be sure, and there was still no more informative sentence there about the geographical setting which was annoying of course.
The principal character, Khara, was a strong, well-written heroine who I was able to stay rooting for to the end of the book. Although I found it difficult sometimes to believe that she was only a young teenager. Most of the dialogue was believable but it did include quite a few modern USA idioms: e.g. darn, dove, barrelling, roiling. However, a couple of words/phrases in the narrative stuck out as wrong, clichés or even misplaced slang – such as remnants, ‘treaded’ (trod?) and ‘truth be told’ unfortunately. The romance element seemed to me to be too strong, becoming somewhat irrelevant at times. Sci-fi novels are most often about either of two main themes: battles between ‘good and evil’ or ‘amazing technical advances’ to test the imagination of the reader. Overall Shattered Souls was OK but I am not a fan.
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