Review: Moirai - Ruth Silver

Moirai
Ruth Silver
Series: Aberrant, #2
Genre: Young Adult, Dystopian
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Word Rating: Mediocre
On Goodreads

Last week, I came to you with a review of Aberrant by Ruth Silver. Since then, I've read the sequel, Moirai, and can say that, while it was slightly better than Aberrant, it still fell short in quite a few places.

Even though some time has passed between the events of Aberrant and Moirai, it feels less like a sequel, and more like a continuation of the first one. If the 100 or so pages of each book had been fused together with an "A Few Months Later" caption before the events of Moirai, the reader would not have found it strange. Usually, you can't do that with books, but with these two it could have been highly possible. Usually books in a series, while continuing the overarching plot, have their own main plot that goes on too. While Moirai certainly had its own subplots, they weren't the strongest.

I definitely liked Olivia better in this book than in the previous one. Ruth Silver did a pretty good job developing her a little more as a character so she didn't seem so one dimensional. She also fleshed out Joshua and some of the secondary characters, which was one of two main reasons this was better than Aberrant. The other reason is that the plot was just more interesting. The first book's job was to set up everything that would happen in this book. While it didn't do the most terrific job, it still got done, and so Moirai was heavier on the action, and relied less on description of the setting and their lifestyle. And, above all, it was a hell of a lot more interesting. The story itself, especially the parts where we learn more about Olivia and exactly what makes her special (can't give away any spoilers) actually had me wanting to find out how it ends (which is with a cliffhanger leading into the next book). So yay for developing your plots more, you go Ruth Silver.

However, the more interesting story could not save Moirai from the dreaded three star rating (I know I also rated Aberrant three stars, but that was on the low end (more like 2.8) and this is on the high end (like 3.2) so there's that). The most off-putting thing was the writing style. I feel like Ruth Silver could be such a good storyteller and author but she just isn't there yet. I can see the potential for her to write great things -- these novels are not those pieces. The dialogue seemed very choppy and fake, and the internal monologue from Olivia seemed to "tell" too much and not "show" enough. The words didn't seem to flow and everything just felt very forced and unnatural. It just fell flat. The end of the book creates a cliffhanger to be addressed in the book that follows, but that wasn't done as well as it could have been and didn't leave me shocked or upset or feeling anything that I was supposed to feel as a reader. I just read it and thought "okay cool whatever." The concept was good but the delivery was not.

Overall, while Moirai wasn't the best book, it definitely improved from it's predecessor. Hopefully the next book will be better, although I don't see myself putting time aside to read it anytime soon. Usually I need to know how something ends, but I will probably forget about this cliffhanger in a few days and might never get around to knowing what happens to certain people. This book series is okay for a few days of lazy reading but it's nothing substantial I would recommend to anyone. While I won't be jumping through hoops to read more, I will definitely look out for Ruth Silver's name in the future, as she has unhoned writing skills that might develop into something awesome.

See you all next week!

- Noor

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