 Okay, so I just finished reading SoulScape. It was written by and requested by K.R. Stevenson. This will be my last Patreon review for the foreseeable future. And this is a fantasy novel which... Did I enjoy it? Not all that much, to be honest. But I see a lot of potential for future growth and future improvement here. This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long. The story for this one starts off pretty simple and... If I'm being honest, it's pretty simple and easy to follow throughout. There's this girl named Blaze, at least I believe it's pronounced blaze. It might be like blazy or blaze, blaza, something like that. Anyways, a girl named Blaze who was part of a clan who, due to a war, was forced out of their home a while ago and they've just been... I don't know, wanderers, let's call them. I couldn't really think of a better word. I wanted to call them nomads, but that's not really the right term here. Anyways, they've been wandering around for a while. They're having a lot of troubles with, like, money and being attacked by bandits and things like that. And then there's another attack and Blaze dies. But she, after dying, pops up on this island called Grimmatoll. And Grimmatoll is a magical island full of fairies and other magical creatures and stuff, except it's also shrinking and it's moving, like, further and further north. So all the coral on the island and some of the plant life and stuff is just starting to die because of the cold. And we don't know exactly why this is happening, but keep reading and you'll find out. From there, things progress, maybe not the exact way you'd expect, but, you know, Blaze learns about the island, she meets some of its denizens, there's a romance which I didn't like very much, I'll get to that in a minute or two. And then there's, like, an evil sorceress who comes in to conquer stuff, and she's a pretty boring villain if I'm being honest, but, you know, things like that. It's not doing anything, like, phenomenally new, and if I'm being honest, it doesn't do anything phenomenally well, but most of the ideas and concepts here are pretty solid. And in fact, as it goes on, there's a lot of, like, little moments where I was thinking, yeah, like, this was pretty good, I wish it had been a little bigger or I wish it had been, I wish more stuff had been like that I suppose would be another way of putting it. And I did kinda like Blaze as a character. See, she's something that's been done a lot that we've all seen. She is a young woman who is, like, really smart and really talented, but she lives in kind of a misogynistic culture who doesn't take her seriously because she's young and because she's a woman. So in the past, we hear about how she came up with, like, battle tactics and strategies that would have helped them during the war, but nobody listened to her, and so that's why they lost. And over the course of the story, we also see some of her other talents and how smart she is, and that's good and all. I just, it never really felt like it went below surface level. You know what I mean? Like, this is a really solid foundation for a character, and it's not like Blaze was ever annoying or anything. She wasn't. She was likable enough. But I just never really felt like I knew what made her tick and what made her into a person that I would want to follow and what made her hurt. And the only other major character that I really want to talk about is a guy named Keleth, who is just a dragon person who lives on this island and greets Blaze when she gets there and the two of them fall in love and stuff. And he falls into kind of the same boat. Like, you know, he's a really old, magically powerful person who is doing his duty. I don't want to get too deep into that because of spoilers, but like, you know, he's, excuse me, he's really devoted to doing his duty on this island and then this girl comes along and he falls in love with her, and he is still devoted to doing his duty on the island. And he is, you know, again, a fine character. I didn't hate him at any point. He was never annoying. I was fine watching him go around do stuff. It just, again, never goes below surface level. You know, this is a very old guy. He's probably seen a lot in his life, and it's brought up a little bit, but I just wish they had gone more into detail on that. And as for the romance between Keleth and Blaze, it's bad, okay? It's one of those things where, like, they just sort of meet each other and then they talk for a little bit and then they start thinking that the other one is hot. They each start thinking that the other one is hot and then they're in love. And it's not really that difficult. They don't have to get to know each other that much. And as I said, there's not all that much to either of them to begin with. So it was really annoying. And I hated, hate, hate, hated the fact that this is one of those books that feels the need to go into graphic detail on the sex scenes. Like, look, pretty much any media I've ever seen that isn't, like, explicitly porn, like whether we're talking movies, books, video games, anything like that. If it ever feels the need to go into explicit detail on the sex scenes, it didn't need to. You know, it can just do a tasteful cutaway because it's always kind of cringey when that happens. Like, I have yet to see a single instance where it's not like that. And in this, it's like, oh, we're having several pages of this shit. And it's just, why? What was the point of that? Like, I've never seen or read something where there was a tasteful cutaway, and then afterwards thought, oh, well, I guess that was fine, but I really wish it had taken time to describe the bumps on his penis. Like, no, never in my life have I wanted that. And I guess for some people, they might feel differently, but honestly, like, just... it's really bad for the rest of us. And at that point, why wouldn't you just want to read porn, anyways? And then there's a lot of characters who just kind of pass in and out of my mind. Like, I barely even remember any of their names. The villain, the evil sorceress, I don't remember her name at all. She is one of the most evil, generic villains I've ever seen, but at the very least, the book does go to lengths to actually make her feel like she's powerful and threatening, not just like, magically, but she has her armies and all that, and they're going to come into the island and kill everybody, and the heroes really have to work and make intelligent defenses and use some clever tactics to try and fight her off. So I liked that, at least. And the last, like, really major, major criticism I have of this book is that the first half, it's hard to get through the first half of this, man. So the first, like, maybe 10 to 15% is fine because that's when we're just being introduced to Blaze and Keleth, and then they get... and then Blaze goes to the island and gets used to her new circumstances, and, you know, that's fine. But then, like, nothing happens for a very long time. Like, and you'd think nothing happening for a long time would be like, oh, the character's getting to know each other or exposition about the nature of the world and how it works, and not really. Like, there's bits of that, sure. Like, there's little bits of exposition about how the magic works, and we hear a little bit about the world, but the world in this was never great because we hear a little bit about it because we... but we never really see it, so it didn't really feel like a real place, if that makes sense. And so the first half of this book, I was just sitting there the whole time going, just something fucking happened, please. And then we get about halfway through and things do pick up a little from there. And at the very least, I won't say that the second half is, like, boring. You know, again, not the most amazing story of all time, but there's things happening. The characters are in danger. They have to work for stuff. It's a lot better. And that's pretty much all I have to say on SoulScape. Like I said, the foundation for a lot of this is good. Like, the foundation of the characters is good. The foundation of the storyline is good. The foundation of the world, there's not a lot there, but we do get little hints of what's going on outside and at the very least, Grimm Atoll is fairly well-defined as a place, and so that's good. And just seeing the rest of this world, I would be somewhat interested in that. It just really needs to go deeper and, well, the fact that it wasted a lot of time in the first half means that it had time to go deeper. You could have done that. And like I said, I see a lot of potential for K.R. Stevenson to get better, but again, that's potential. Just work at it a little and she'll probably get there. So do I recommend SoulScape? If you're really craving fantasy that isn't too long and isn't too dark or anything like that and you can, again, see past the sex scenes and some of the more boring parts, so basically if you're looking for fantasy that has a little bit more of a focus on romance, you might be into this, but for other people, I don't know if this would really be your cup of tea, but who knows, it's supposed to be part of a series so maybe the others will be great and I'll be telling you in a couple of years that I gotta get past the first one, which isn't great and then the rest are a lot better. Special thanks to all the names you see here. These are all my patrons and especially thanks to my $10.00 and up patrons, Oppo Savalainen, Olivia Rand, Brother Santotys, Karolina Clay, Christopher Quinten, Echo, Great Griebo, Joel, Carcat Kitsune, K.R. 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