Series: The Eternal Elements #1
Authors: Austin Boyd
& Brannon Hollingsworth
Genre: Adult Allegory/Urban Fantasy
Ratings: Craft—2, Content—3,
Overall—2.9 out of 5 stars
Excerpt from Chapter 1 of H2O:
Water
spilled over the blade of my knife like liquid silk. Flushed by the stream, raw
fish swirled down the kitchen drain on a mysterious journey, headed back to Puget Sound and home. Fluid poetry gushed from the tap,
beauty rinsing away grime. I held my hand under its caress, entranced. Water
was too special, too eternal, to be so common.
“Aren’t you
finished yet?” Xavier asked, shaking his head as he peered into the kitchen
sink of my Seattle
I dangled a
fresh slice of buttery-rich raw tuna before him and winked. He jerked back as
though contact with beady-eyed water creatures might taint him. Perhaps he
feared that one brush against piscine slime would transform him into a rough
guy on the wharf or a wrinkled old man sitting by a pond with a cane pole.
“Skip the
drama, Xavier,” I said with a laugh, biting into the sweet flesh. I brushed
bangs out of my eyes with the back of my hand and waved another slice of tuna
in his direction. He ignored me.
“My guests
will be here in a half an hour,” he said, retreating toward the den. “The main
dish still has scales on it.”
“You can’t see tuna scales, X. So, quit worrying. I’ll be ready.”
A successful business woman’s life falls apart when her
every contact with water starts sparking unwanted visions.
The
Craft: H2O is
a novel that is nearly as hard to grasp as the liquid it focuses on.
The premise is intriguing (how far would you go to avoid a
necessity of life if you felt it was making you insane, literally?), and the
varied cast, while not the most remarkable, is distinct.
Despite this, the plot finds no traction. The opening is
convoluted and slow while the middle flat-lines and fails to raise the stakes.
The heavy symbolism and mystical atmosphere squashes many of the other high
tension points.
Overall, H2O
was a story with high potential. But with no outstanding elements and
overbearing symbolism which confuses rather than adding depth, the novel felt
like a disappointment.
The
Content: With the heavy symbolism, you would think H2O would be rife with meaning
and unexpected gems of truth. This does not seem to be so, at least for me.
Maybe because I struggled to find traction with the story
itself I missed the depths of truth being conveyed. However, for me, the story
seemed to be little more than a “be washed and you shall be clean” conversion
story with no truly fresh insights. It has a couple other subthemes dealing
with wealth/success and parentage/upbringing, but like the main theme, these seem
to offer nothing that makes me go, “I’ve never thought of it like that.”
In other elements, there’s no violence to speak of, and no
swearing as far as I remember. The protagonist is in a sexual relationship
outside of marriage and there are references to past such relationships, but
all sexuality is off the page. The visions are the only supernatural element,
which seems to basically fit the boundaries set out in Scripture.
Summary: H2O does not contain anything
to warrant caution. Nor does it contain anything to recommend it, making it a
uninspiring and somewhat forgettable story in my book.
Ratings: Craft—2,
Content—3, Overall—2.9 out of 5 stars
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