Thursday, April 16, 2020

Book Review: Heart of Glass by Teelia Pelletier (Strong Hearts are Mandatory #1)


Strong Hearts Are Mandatory: Heart Of Glass (Volume 1): Pelletier ...
A nice pretty short read about a group of cats who go on a quest to find the pieces of a shattered artifact. Spoilers below the cut.


It does have some flaws (mostly in character descriptions being too long or repeated too often, whereas the environment isn't described enough, so the reader doesn't exactly know what things are supposed to look like). Also not sure if I feel comfortable with one of the characters being referred to as "it" for a lot of the book when these are characters with human intelligence. Just use they/them for neutral. "It" is a bit dehumanizing (or de-animal-izing in this case) when it's used.

The characters were all right, though I didn't find myself being too intrigued by the main character Radio. Still, I was surprised and felt sad when she got killed at the end, especially since it was by one of the characters she considered her close friend. I guess you could say... Video killed the Radio Star?
Pictures wasn't really my cup of tea, either, but I did thoroughly enjoy Video, especially after the POV changing to her perspective at the end. The villain was fun enough, but I kind of think he just showed up too much? Whenever there was some conflict needed, he just suddenly was somewhere to cause mayhem.

There were definitely some editing and formatting issues, so it could've used another revision. The pacing was decent, and the ending is definitely the very best part of Heart of Glass.

For a first indie published when the author was only eighteen years old, I'd say this is quite the impressive feat, despite some of the minor flaws. I recommend you pick this one up if you like fantasy and/or xenofiction (most notably about cats). I'll likely be checking out the second book Straight to Video soon!

Rating: 3/5

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