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Butterfly Islands, a YA fantasy

space"Butterfly Islands" by Chris Seabranch is a YA coming of age plus pirate-filled action novel. The storyline is interesting and offers a few twists and turns, sure to please the teen to younger adult reader. However, this reader had many problems with the story, with the foremost problem that of Seabranch telling almost the entire book versus showing the reader the story as it unfolds. Narrative is a useful tool where one can learn loads of needed information to keep a plot moving forward, an entire story of mostly narrative can be a tedious read however. At around eighty percent read is where this reader found Seabranch finally showing more of the story instead of telling it, so the last twenty percent was pretty interesting to read.
spaceThe story is told in an omniscient point of view where the narrator dips into the thoughts and views of many of the characters, from main - such as Alfred, the Govenor's son, to various tradespeople that simply witness some incidents or situations that are happening. This can be disconcerting and never allows a reader to fully empathize with any single person found within the pages. Characters seem to be built a certain way and then a thought is tossed in that seems completely out of character for them, such as Alfred, written as an abusive, domineering bully that is bent upon breaking the wills of young girls, to suddenly having caring thoughts about a young prostitute in his bed: "Where did you come from... What made you turn to prostitution... You could have done so many other things in your life" (Seabranch). Say what? Alfred was presented as one looking forward to breaking in his future fifteen-year-old wife and bending her to his will, to now suddenly caring about why this eighteen-year-old prostitute lives the life she does...? None of the characters were fully developed, so this reader never found a reason to empathize or care about any of them. Dialogue was often flat, stilted and seemed to be mainly information dumps versus an actual conversation. None of the characters had a unique voice that distinguished one from another.
spaceSeabranch attempted many huge tasks such as writing six books in six months; creating an appealing fantasy world; dealing with the majority of the main characters being the opposite sex of the writer and presenting how they might feel in the various situations they found themselves in; putting a voice to oppressed females dealing with abusive males; and, young girls experimenting and/or questioning their sexuality, to name a few. It is obvious to this reader that Seabranch is creative, however, this reader felt he fell short in many of the percieved goals. As the sexual inferences are fairly low key and the action and blood letting are at a thrilling level, this reader feels the book will likely be of interest to younger teens and youngish adults but that many adults would likely not care for almost an entire book told to them instead of being shown and being allowed to live the action through the character's eyes. There are spelling and grammar issues found within the story as well; the author did send a free copy of this story in exchange for an honest review. This reader offers a three star review for Seabranch's creativity and attemptes at the headier issues facing the characters. ** Review originally posted to Amazon review on August 26, 2016. **

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