"I do feel there is a story under all the confusion."

SufferStone

Written by Stella Atrium

Genre: Fantasy

Book Synopsis

On Dolvia, the women of the savannah serve under the burka, but Kyle Le was denied that covering by tribal leaders. Only her gift of second sight and the mortgage on her father's land protect her and her three sisters.

Kyle Le meets Brian Miller, a Softcheeks who teaches her about offworld politics and accumulating wealth while she teaches him the words of power from Mekucoo.

Working alongside the warrior Cyrus, they labor against the mining enterprise that robs teh savannah of its mineral wealth and leaves the tribes with only the scarred and suffering land.

Bec's Rating

Bec's Review

Sufferstone is one of those stories told in multiple parts, with each part being a different first person perspective. As a result there were times when it took a few pages to work out whose perspective I was reading. Further, some of the parts start (and in one case finish) before the beginning or the end of the previous part, making it difficult to construct in your mind a linear progression of the story. As the story itself can move months, weeks or only hours in a few paragraphs, this task of trying to get a sense of time is made even more difficult. As such I never had an idea how long had passed between events in the story. This was not helped by long paragraphs with no visible gaps between events.

As a result there was a bit of confusing when reading Sufferstone. It isn’t until halfway through the book that you learn just what Sufferstone is, and I feel it isn’t really until halfway through the book that the story picks up or that I began to get interested in the story. The first part of the story, told from the perspective of Brian, was the one I found the most confusing in terms of time and what was occurring, and was one of the longer ones while doing very little to further the story from what I could tell beyond providing a lengthy background to the actual story. The confusion I felt in this chapter was not helped by providing terms and customs of the native people to the land that were not were not explained until a later chapter.

There were times when I did find myself not only understanding the events of Sufferstone but also enjoying it. Sadly though most of my time spent reading Sufferstone was spent in a state of confusion. I do feel there is a story under all the confusion somewhere and one that could be quite interesting if only the confusing aspects caused by time and aspects of the natives unexplained could be fixed. When I knew what was happening I was engaged in the story. It’s a shame that didn’t happen all the time.

Disclaimer: May not be appropriate for children due to violence.