The Never Tilting World by Rin Chupeco

DNF @ p. 66

Oh man, this is another review that is probably going to get me hate, but you know what, I thought this book was bad and I'm not sorry about being honest. I'd be a pretty crappy book blogger if I lied to you and said this was amazing when I kept zoning out while reading this and thinking about all the other books I'd rather be reading instead. It was boring and 100% not for me.

On the surface, THE NEVER TILTING WORLD sounded amazing. LGBT+ fantasy set in a broken world where one half is always cold and dark and the other half is sunny and light. It reminded me of this planet I watched in this documentary called "Exoplanets from Hell" (which is totally amazing and you should track it down and watch it), and I believe the planet that I'm thinking of was Upsilon Andromeda b, a planet that is literally half-fire and half-ice. Obviously my nerdy heart started palpitating and I couldn't wait to get my hands on this book.

THE NEVER TILTING WORLD turned out to be not my thing, though. The world-building is kind of a mess. I loved the premise, but it was so convoluted and confusing that I couldn't get into it. I had a similar problem with another book, THE TENTH GIRL, where I could not figure out if the author was doing a bad job explaining the story to me, or if I was just too stupid and uninterested to figure out what was going on. There are goddesses in this world, and they're at odds, and it has something to do with what caused the planet to "break" in the first place, and that's as far as I got.

There's also some "this is my original character" fanfic vibes going on here. Two of the characters have LITERAL RAINBOW HAIR and one of the characters has two colored eyes (I think one is gold and one is violet/blue). Everyone in this book has a POV chapter of their own and unfortunately they all have very similar narratives, so it was impossible to keep track of who was who, which was another thing that made it difficult to keep track of what was going on. I shouldn't have to keep flipping back to the chapter heading to look at who's narrating. They should be distinct.

I'm sorry to give up on this but I'm not going to waste my time on something I'm not enjoying, either. You might very well like this, and if you do, more power to you.

Disclaimer: I am reviewing an ARC copy of this work and my copy may be different from yours.

1 out of 5 stars