Robin Wyatt Dunn

The Black King of Kalfour was such a difficult book that I must disclose I could not read it and so my review is probably unfair - but let me explain my reasons. The odd initial presentation was, I assume, on purpose, but each of the first six unnumbered pages, presumably a prologue, contained few words and required constant scrolling, which I found irritating. Excuse me, the second of those unnumbered pages contained no words. All I saw was a large black rectangle, with no explanation. Was that a problem with the PDF or was it on purpose as well? No way to know. The book seems to be a stream of consciousness fictional memoir. Again, I may be unfairly judging, but by page four of the body of the book (numbered pages) I was lost. I had no idea who was speaking. I decided to jump through the book to see if it got any better - but it got worse. The writing throughout seemed to be a collection of random thoughts, no matter what page I landed on.
And that’s as far as I was willing to go.
… (més)

2023-01-23: It has come to my attention (again) that I've failed to post reviews on most of my EarlyReveiwer books so I'm trying to remedy that. Thus far, about 50% in, this is an abomination. The Tonto talk is really annoying and seems to work well to hide any meaningful message in the book. It's only saving grace is that it's short.

2023-01-24: The best thing about this book is that it's in the past. The Tonto talk was supposedly ebonics so apparently Tonto was way ahead of the times. Every once in a while it felt like the author had a point, and then it was immediately buried in gibberish. I did learn that wheat may have been involved in the lightening of skin and that the folks around Pot Belly hill in Turkey may have eaten a lot of wheat. 🤷‍♀️ I also learned that I did not care for this book at all.… (més)

After getting to the 40% mark on my kindle, I can safely say, I have zero clue what the heck this book is trying to portray.

The prose is confusing to follow, the narrative jumps all over the place. There is an over abundance of “facts” being used but it doesn’t actually explain anything. So it gives off the vibes of someone who is trying to prove they are really smart but don’t know how to utilize their own intellect.

I applied for the ARC for this because the synopsis talked about Ragnarok, and that piqued my interest as a lover of Norse Mythology. After 40% the only thing Norse related as been the the word Valhalla once, so I am assuming it doesn’t actually have anything to do with Ragnarok. Everything else is school?church? Or university? I don’t know!! At some point the guy is in jail, and then there is medication, and a random girl who he I guess loves but can’t have. And Theater plays. It’s all over the place and just doesn’t make sense.

I don’t know if it’s me, or if it’s the book, but this overall just doesn’t make any sense to me, so It will be a DNF for me at 40%. I was provided an ARC copy from LibraryThing Early Reviewers, in exchange for an honest review.… (més)