The Buried World by Jeff Wheeler

I am intrigued by the world of Bingmei and cohorts. There are some great characters and a really great premise. Very real consequences come from Bingmei's selfishness. I enjoy her story. Unfortunately, I do not seem to be hooked on Jeff Wheeler's writing style.  It took me a little over two weeks to read this novel, which is a painfully slow reading pace for me. I do admit that the Asian based names tend to slow me down because I want to have the pronunciation perfect in my head so I'll get hung up on a sentence every now and again.

But you may also remember my review of The Killing Fog here back in February. Unfortunately many of the same struggles I had with novel number one, I find continue in novel number two. The repetition of Bingmei's descriptions on smells borders on irritating, but this time I find that the repetitive dialog seeped into the world and character descriptions as well. 

The first half of the book I often just stopped out of frustration. Then something just seemed to switch. The writing smoothed out, the repetition became a little less frequent, and I was able to push through the last half in just a couple of days. The action scenes we get are absolutely phenomenal, like having a kung fu moving playing in your head while you read. It's these moments that make me understand people's recommendation for Jeff Wheeler.

If you'd like to make your own opinion, The Buried World is publishing June 23rd.