The Defiant Spark by Annie PercikMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
So forgettable that I had to open it three or four days after I finished it to even remember what book it was.
A kind of contemporary alternate-universe fantasy, in which devices (known as artefacts) run by magic. They are all called X-e-facts, where X is what they do; a car is a speed-e-fact, a phone is a call-e-fact, and so on. This becomes annoying almost immediately.
Most of the characters are flat and have no real arc, with the exception, not of the male lead and (arguable) protagonist, but of his love interest - who has to have an arc, and change, to be someone we would want to see him with. Unlike the rest of the characters, she has hints of backstory and touches of things about her that are not simply about her role in the plot but about her being a rounded, believable character. Everyone else, including the male lead, seems to have sprung into existence fully formed at the point they're introduced to the plot, and then undergoes very little more development. Jen barely has any characteristics at all, and Marco has very little beyond his "protagonist's best mate" role.
(view spoiler)
The conscious-robots subplot is underdeveloped, and never really seemed that integrated with the main plot to me. The triggering event - the MC giving a robot a name instead of a number - seems like an insufficient cause for the effect it has.
All this is presented to us in the punctuation style I think of as "British breathless," because it needs about 20% more commas, mostly between grammatical clauses.
Not recommended.
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