The Pale by Clare Rhoden Review

The Pale

by Clare Rhoden

Thank you to the author and Rachel's Random Resources for a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are my own and are not influenced in any way. 

Goodreads Blurb:

The Outside can be a dangerous place.
But so can the inside.

It’s been years since the original cataclysm, but life has been structured, peaceful, and most of all uneventful in the Pale. The humachine citizens welcome the order provided by their ruler, the baleful Regent.

However, when one of their own rescues a human boy, Hector, from ravenous ferals on the Outside, their careful systems are turned upside down.

As Hector grows more and more human-strange, the citizens of the Pale grow uneasy.

What will happen when the Outside tries to get in?

The Pale takes us to a time when the world has been destroyed and humans have attempted to rebuild what is left. We have the humachines, mechanically altered humans, canini, genetically altered canine and a whole cast of characters created with some outside-the-box thinking. 

What I Didn't Like:

It was hard to keep focused on this book. There's a lot going on so you need to be paying attention to keep it all straight. I found myself getting bored which led to getting lost and had to reread certain things to keep track of what was going on. To me, I found a lot of filler in the book that took away from the actual story. This is a slow-paced novel, which is something I dislike in general. 

What I Did Like:

The canini. I absolutely loved them. The canini are altered canines with thumbs and the ability to mindspeak. Who wouldn't love for their dog to mindspeak to them? There was just something about them that really grabbed my attention. Their parts were done very well and was definitely my favorite parts of the book. The Temple Lady. This lady is a character you hate to like. She isn't the nicest person in the book, far from it actually, but she is enjoyable in a god-I-wanna-slap-her way. You know, the type of character that you don't like as a person but you enjoy reading about them anyway. There are a whole cast of characters in this book that are enjoyable. 

The ending picked up a bit for me. There are a few events that happen near the end that set up for book 2 Broad Plain Darkening in the sense that you want to find out what happens next. I feel like it seemed the story begun but never really went anywhere, just minor events to start a snowball later on. 

Rating this book is difficult because while I didn't particularly enjoy this book it does have a lot of good qualities that I think others would enjoy. Overall I feel neutral about the book. I didn't hate it, I didn't love it.