Blog tour: Render by Stephanie Fleshman - a review

This week has been all about Stephanie Fleshman and her YA novel Render. You can read my intro and see a book trailer here, an interview with her here, a guest post by her here, and an excerpt of the book here.

I have received a free copy of the book in exchange for my review, this will however not influence my opinion about the book.

Short synopsis
Koldan, an 18 year old prodigy, thinks he has his life in front of him; a promising career as a doctor and the most wonderful girlfriend - Raya - that he plans to marry. But when his grandfather dies, everything changes when he finds a diary filled with mystical clues. These clues lead Koldan and Raya on to a dangerous voyage. Together with them they have Lukas, Koldan's younger brother, and their friend Ethan. Not until it seems to be too late, they realize how everything is connected through Koldan and Lukas' Russian heritage, and the reasons why their grandfather fled Russia when he was 18. Will Koldan manage to escape from his destiny and save his relationship with Raya?


Review 
While in Glasgow a few weeks back, I read a book review in The Independent on Sunday that ended with "As empty as its protagonist, the novel is stuck in her superficial worldview and lacks the gravitas or literary panache to puss us out of it." I don't have the literary quality to even write such a sentence, but more importantly - this is not how I feel about Render. However, there are some things I find troublesome during my reading of the book.

One of the most annoying things I know about, is loose ends. But equally annoying are loose beginnings. And unfortunately there are several of them in Render. What is a loose beginning, you may ask? It is when suddenly something appears without being well enough built up to. For me at least, it felt like it was out of the blue when the kids left on the voyage. What was so exciting with the diary that made them do it? How come Raya's and Lukas' parents let them travel all the way from the US to Australia? They're only 17, so they would need some kind of permission. Why were Raya and Lukas suddenly so close friends that they didn't have to speak to each other, they would instinctively understand what the other person was thinking? Nothing before that moment described their friendship as that close. And why would the story have to take place on a remote, lost island? I have the feeling the author was so excited about the action part of the story she wanted to tell, that she sometimes forgot that it isn't just about the action, it is also about understanding why the action is happening.

I have also read that the story is supposed to be in the paranormal genre, at it takes place in a world very similar to our own, but that it isn't our world. In this book, there aren't any hints of paranormalcy, neither are there any hints about their world not being our world.

But not everything is bad. Far from it! Stephanie Fleshman writes well. She doesn't fill her story with clichés and plump language. The story is constantly driven forward, and she doesn't linger with unnecessary descriptions of people and places. The reader wants to know what is going to happen on the next page, and we want to know if everything will be ok with Koldan and Raya.

The end makes it clear that this is the first book of a series, and I really hope some of the loose beginnings (and loose ends!) will be closed and better explained in the next books. It might also become clear why the author considers the book to be paranormal, and what the difference between their world and our world is. I know I will be reading them, because I have started to care about Koldan, Raya, Lukas and Ethan.