The Sparks by Kyle Prue - 2 stars (cross-posted to PBT Stairs)

[annapi]

Three feuding families, each family with magical superhuman traits that over the years has made them arrogant and superior to ordinary humans, suddenly find themselves the target of a human emperor determined to wipe out any possible threat to his rule.

This book was written by the author when he was 16, and published when he was 19. While it shows promise, the author's youth and lack of life experience shows. Too much telling instead of showing, cheesy dialogue, lack of character depth, too much melodrama. I only pushed myself to finish it so I could mark off a challenge for "a book written by a teenager". However, it will be interesting to see how he improves if he continues to write, considering this won Honorable Mentions at several book festivals, won runner up for Best YA Fiction at the Florida Book Festival, and the author has won an International Moonbeam Award for Best Young Author. You can see what induced me to pick it up, but as I'm not the target audience of teenagers, I was not very impressed. I do have to give him kudos for actually writing it, and this is the first of a trilogy. I hope the next two books show an improvement, but I don't think I will be reading them.

[Cora]

Too bad it was not well written. The premise seems interesting.