The Raie'Chaelia (Review)
Title: The RaieāChaelia
Series: The RaieāChaelia (Book #1)
Summary: When Chalice sets off for Branbury in the middle of the night with her grandfather's instructions, she has no idea of the dangers that await her. The King's men have destroyed her home village of Canton and she is suddenly thrown into a Terravailian world that she does not know. Lost and alone, she is hard pressed to evade the iron grasp of the madman who rules the land. With the help of a friendly Chinuk, an old man, and a book that she discovers along the way, not only does she find true friends and true love, but she also finds her true self and what it means to be the Raie'Chaelia.
Review: This is the first time where I felt like I honestly deserved some type of award for actually finishing. Likeā¦it was that bad.
Before I begin this whole review, I just want to make it absolutely clear that I had a copy of this book long before the author drama went down on GoodReads and other websites with Ms. Douthit. Itās definitely not a story I want to delve into now, but I only bring it up because I want everybody to know that this a book I read with my school book club, and this review is a review of the book, and not the authorās behavior.
That being said, I honestly tried to keep an open mind. But there were very, very few redeeming qualities in this story and the writingāchief among them being that this was almost a good plot with a terribly poor execution. But, as a friend on GoodReads pointed out to me, it was only good in theory because it stole all the good ideas from other stories (there were plenty of characters/ideas parallel to things from the legend of the Holy Grail, Lord of the Rings, and Harry Potter, to name a few). At its core, it was hardly original to begin with. That doesnāt even begin to cover the overwhelming amount of grammatical issues, punctuation errors, plot holes, and clichĆ©s that littered this entire book. It took aā¦heroic effort, on my part, to actually finish. To be honest, Iām not sure what happened the last ten percent of the novel, because my eyes kept blurring, but I did take meticulous notes during the first nine-tenths of the book. Chances are very few of you have heard of this book anyway, and even then, probably only because of the infamous Douthit debacle that blew up online last year, so take it from meāthis isnāt some hidden gem that youāre missing out on. Continue on in blissful ignorance of its existence, because youāre saving yourself many a headache by steering clear.
Itās true that I usually try to find something redeeming, even in books I hate. The most frustrating thing here is that if only Douthit hadnāt thrown up a thesaurus and stolen so many ideas from other people, it had the slightest, slimmest chance of being a somewhat decent novel. Not goodānever good, based on what there was to work withābut stillā¦there was a little inkling of something. But it was buried underneath all the ridiculous extra stuff, and weāll never know whether it might have been something actually worth reading had it gone through a lot more editing.
Iām going to try really hard to organize my issues with this book, so forgive me if itās a little jumbled. The first thing I noticed about this book that was very wrong was the immense info-dumping. The entire book was one huge info-dump, although sometimes it was a little more subtle. The opening chapters consisted of long details of Chaliceās entire backstory and history and the way the setting looked, etc. There was tons of explaining in order to help the reader āget intoā the story. I guess I could understand it in the beginning, but the info-dumping continued throughout the whole book. The dialogue began to follow a very formulaic pattern of Character A asking Character B a question, and Character B answering with, āGood question!ā and following with a very detailed explanation. Then Character A would say, āOh, I get it! So this-and-this causes this-and-this?ā and Character B would continue with their very long explanation, fueled by Character Aās understanding. It was incredibly frustrating, because the reader (or the characters) was never left to discover things on their own. As soon as something didnāt make sense, the characters would jump in and offer the entire history of that item, the reason itās important, and why itās relevant now. Which doesnāt make for an interesting story. On top of the info-dumping, there were just too many details I didnāt care about. Every time the characters sat down for a meal, we would get an explanation of every food they ate and how it was made and what it tasted likeā¦and if they talked about a game or a custom, pages of explanation for that game or custom would ensure directly afterwards.
There were lots of rip-offs of other things in this book. Thereās some secret cup that brings immortality to whoever drinks of it (but only if they have a pure heart), which is a direct copy of the Holy Grail. The Chinuk race is a combination of Ewoks and chipmunks (the main Chinuk even has a brother named Mooky, which is almost a blatant plagiarism of Wookie, from Star Wars). Thereās a famous horse called āWhite Beautyā, which is Black Beauty āre-imaginedā. Thereās a holiday celebrating the dead in the autumn, which is actually a blatant rip-off of an actual holiday (Day of the Dead). The last one I care to mention right now is the character of BenāBen is Gandalf and Aragorn all wrapped into one. In a status update detailing the paragraph where Ben is introduced, one friend (who has never read Lord of the Rings), commented after seeing a post on Tumblr circulating with Aragornās opening paragraph, saying how similar the two descriptions were. And she was very rightāeverything is exactly the same, to the dark hood pulled up, revealing nothing but the glint of his eyes, to speaking briefly with the bartender before resuming their secluded position in the innās bar. It was ridiculous, and I could argue that this is almost blatant plagiarism. It was absolutely ridiculous. Various little similarities continued throughout the rest of the book, and I simply do not have the energy to recall all of them at this moment.
Should I even talk about Jeremiah and Chalice? Is that a can of worms I want to open? I suppose I should cover it, seeing as they were the main couple in the storyā¦Well, the first thing you should know is that, despite what the description says, Jeremiah and Chalice are not true loves. They would like you to think so, but there was little to no evidence that they belonged together. Chalice breaks into Jeremiahās house and after attacking him, he exclaims that he knows her. She absolutely does not recognize him at all. After a few minutes, Chalice realizes that, āOh! Itās Jeremiah, who lived in my house for three years!ā She seriously didnāt even recognize the guy who lived with her for three years! (And she was supposedly nine or ten when they were best friends.) The two immediately start acting as if they hadnāt been separated for nine years, and are surprisingly cozy considering they hardly know each other. They kiss once and continue to never speak of it again, until suddenly, there are complications with the two races marrying, and Chalice and Jeremiah are suddenly heartbroken because they wonāt be able to get married. Their entire relationship is just kind of thrown at your out of the blue, because they have little to no chemistry, and they never talk about their feelings. They both just assume that they love each other, even though they never talk to each other about it, nor do either of them ever actual say āI love youā out loud to the other. They just made me angry because Iām such a diehard romantic, and they took āromanceā and trampled it underneath an angry horse. (ā¦Did that even make sense? Itās late. Maybe I should step away from the keyboard before I make any more wonky analogies.)
The writing itself was just terrible. There were a lot of awful clichĆ©s (the main characterās birthday comes and goes, but she doesnāt mention it because she doesnāt want to āstress anyone outā; she has a weird birthmark on her shoulder; she also has a special pendant given to her by her grandfather; also an ancient heirloom from her grandmother; etc.) that I really could have done without. The dialogue was awkward and a weird mix of remaining medieval and being awkwardly modern, it was redundant and stupid, and justā¦bad. Itās obvious that nobody bothered to edit this book, because there were so many terrible grammatical errorsāincluding periods where question marks should have been, and no ās in the possessive of certain characters, etc. The narration would say that āChalice voice echoed in the hallā, when it is the voice of Chalice. Basic errors that could have been avoided if someone had just read through it. Douthit also tried to create a ton of different languages and places in this book, to a point where you can tell Douthit just hit a bunch of symbols on her Word Processor and called it good. One of the places was āRĆ“iāStĆ”tchĆØnā Ā and a line from one of the Chinukan royalty read, āHĆ¢jyĆ h zĆ»nlĆ kĆ», StĆ”ttĆØkrĆ”jā. Itās just ridiculous. In no world could just ridiculous words even begin to exist (as proved by another friend on GoodReads who talked about linguistics in her review). There was nothing redeeming in the writing. It was so amateur and bad that, while it was a funny-bad at first, by the end, I wanted to curl up in a ball and cry with frustration at its awful-ness.
Overall: To be honest, thereās probably more to talk about. But I donāt have the energy to keep writing or even keep thinking about this awful book anymore. I want to delete it from my phone and just move on with my life and put this terrible, terrible thing behind me. Douthit? Whoās that? I donāt even want to remember anymore. Delete from brain. Move along, people. Nothing to see here.