Reviewed by Chris*
TITLE: Nami 
AUTHOR: Victoria Zagar
PUBLISHER: Wilde City Press
LENGTH: 58 pages
BLURB:
The Empire is sweeping the land, taking cities and towns by force. Nami, a young priest dedicated to the Goddess Ceres, is ready to sacrifice himself as Numidia falls, but his slave, lover, and protector Avan saves Nami from the temple flames against his will.
Alive and outraged, Nami travels to the city of Gran Terra to consult the Great Temple, but Avan’s love is changing Nami’s worldview. When he sees the Great Temple has become a hive of greed and indulgence, he challenges the idea of dying for a deity. However, the High Priest has another idea, and Nami will have to find every ounce of strength inside himself if he’s to escape the Temple alive with Avan by his side.
REVIEW:
Have you ever read a book where even from the get-go you are positive that you are missing key chapters of the story? That was this story. Except it wasn’t chapters it was missing, it was 2/3 of the book.
We start out with Nami and Avan about to burn down their temple because the Empire is coming (dun-dun-dun-dunta-dun-dunta-dun (sorry, couldn’t help myself. Too much Star Wars on the brain)). Nami is totally ready to become a human torch because it is the rules or something, but Avan, his lover, will not have that. So Avan rescues Nami, and then they head off to the head of Nami’s order. But Nami is supposed to be dead, and his church is going to rectify this situation.
…and so Nami gets gang-raped, Avan gets tortured, and everyone gets to die a bloody bloody death.
All for some reason I was never quite clear on.
There was absolutely no effort put into making these characters ‘real’ during the first chapter of this book. It starts off in what feels like the climax of a different book, and it throws off the rhythm of the entire story. Horrible after horrible things happen, but because I never felt an iota of connection to the characters, I was not drawn to sympathize with them, I was just horrified and disgusted.
While I will never be one to enjoy rape in the stories I read, I can deal with it if it feels like the author takes the subject seriously. It didn’t feel like that here. Not only does it feel like the rape was used solely to gain sympathy for a character that was lacking in any real depth, but also the aftermath was shoddily done as well. I can not and will never be in charge of deciding how people react to violent abuse forced upon them, but this books seems to wholly ignore the aftereffects of the situations played out in the previous chapters and scenes. Just because this is a short story does not mean that characters cannot react in realistic ways. Yeah, you probably don’t have time to go into the full horror and pain, but it should be treated with a bit more attention to detail.
I just had a very hard time reading this story. It was only 58 pages and yet every word was a struggle to get thru. I genuinely dislike rating books this low, but to give it a higher rating would be extremely dishonest. I can’t say that I would recommend it to anyone, unless you are up for pointless pain and torture.
RATING:
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*I previously published my reviews under the name Carissa. As I work to update my profile on Love Bytes, please be aware that posts may be found under either my old name or my new name–depending on when they were originally posted. Hopefully the change-over will not take long and everything will be easier to find at the end of this all.