The Lineage of Tellus Book1: Memories & Murder by Lauren J. Hasbrouck (Read 4/5-4/21)

This was a book I received from LibraryThing.com’s Early Reviewers.  I guess I should have read the description better before I said I would read it, I read the part about the fantasy quest to avenge Ashei’s Mothers death.  I missed the disclaimer that this was a high fantasy series for fans of adventure, dry wit, and broad sexuality.

In fact the “broad sexuality” threw me for a loop at first, it was just so in my face.   That it really distracted me from the story line.  I mean I don’t mind reading about sex, and I made it through Anne Rice’s Sleeping Beauty Series, and this has nothing on that series, but because I missed the disclaimer I was a bit unprepared for it and like I said distracted trying to figure out what I had gotten myself into checking the box for this book.  After awhile all the gay jokes became offensive, just because there were SOOO many of them.  I think sex and sexuality can add a lot to a story, this book just wasn’t written well enough to do that, so instead the sex and sexuality was a boring and upset me because I really wanted to get to the heart of the storyline and I couldn’t get through the fluff.

Laying all of that aside, this book is obviously a first attempt at a novel.  There was too much background in the first few pages, I felt a bit hammered over the head.  And Lauren’s writing style is a bit difficult to read, it is very choppy.  The storyline seems like a great concept if Lauren’s writing skills didn’t distract form it so much.  I think she felt she needed to add to much to the story to fill it out, when she had a great underlying base that could have really flourished if she had just let it be a little less fluffed.

The characters are a bit stereotypical, the barmaid with the courage of a warrior, the harlot with a heart of gold, the effeminate elf, the strong man who’s downfall is love, the evil wizard….I’m sure you get the idea.  Tellus is a strange mix of modern and medieval landscape.  I like it, and I think it is a great background, I just wish the characters were as deep.   The entire book felt a bit teenage cliché to me.  Why in the world would the characters act the way they did, and yes I know the obvious reason is because they had to in order to move the story in the direction Lauren wanted it to go.  Why was Ashei so sure her mom was murdered and part of some big conspiracy?  I mean from what I could tell until she died, Ashei thought she was perfectly normal. 

Why do Tris and Anne agree to go on the “quest”?  How do they even know where to start looking and why to start looking there?  And Finn…why the heck would he ever say yes.  The entire first part of the book I was was asking myself these sorts of questions, because the actions just seemed so random.  I think part of the problem was that Lauren was so focused on setting up the sexual tension scenario’s that she forgot to actually write about the characters. 

This is the 1st in a series and by Chapter 6 I knew Finn was a dragon and the son of the evil wizard.  I also knew the whole book was going to ramble and be one pointless adventure after another that really didn’t help move the core storyline along.  They could have if only they had been written better.  I am sorry to say, but I have no desire at all to read anymore of this series, I usually don’t say that but this was just awful…the writing was crude and the sexuality became tedious and offense after a while.  I applaud Lauren for following her dreams, but I’m sorry that this book was not a dream come true for me.