Review: The Ill-Made Mute

The Ill-Made Mute by Cecilia Dart-Thornton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Narrated by Kim Bretton
Presented by Leaves of Gold Press

The first 25% of this really dragged, but it picked up enough that I ended up rather enjoying it! It's long and chaotic but does end up having some fun ideas.

I tuned out a lot the first time and ended up going back and re-listening to soak in more.

It begins with a mutilated orphan who has no memory of who they are. A local woman takes the child in and we spend the first third of the book at this outpost sitting around listening to ghost stories while the 'ugly creature' is bullied mercilessly. The bullying is a tired old trope and, while the stories were entertaining enough, as the opening of the story it just made me settle in for dull.

Eventually, though, adventure begins and things pick up. There are definitely a lot of superfluous words used and it takes its time repeating things over and over, but the adventure is fun and the supporting characters are entertaining. Our main character not so much. Very dull.

Speaking of, it does feel a bit dated in the sense that so much of the story relates to how ugly our main character is, and their desire to be attractive. I don't think that would fly quite as well today, and it did grate on me a little. There's no message about accepting who you are as you are, it's all, 'damn this thing is hideous so it must be treated accordingly'.

I do feel like this one was a bit all over the place. It's not a short book and it wanders all over the place; it never feels like a cohesive, purposeful story. More like our main character is just following along for the ride. I found it easy to get distracted and often zoned out but was able to pick back up fairly easily.

My feelings towards the narrator were a confusing mess. At first, it sounded like AI narration which I didn't like at all, but bumping it up to x2 speed made that problem go away. Beyond that, the differentiation between voices was incredible and brilliantly done, to the point that it didn't even sound like the same person. I ended up being really impressed with it.

A side note: I do get frustrated when I hear wrong pronunciation, so hearing 'valet' as 'val-et' twice bothered me, but then I heard it again in a TV show?? Is this a new thing? Because I would swear on my life it's always been pronounced with a silent T, like 'val-ehy'. HELP PLEASE.

Overall, this was a rather average introduction to the series, and not enough to get me to buy the second book. There's potential here, but it does feel a little like a story cobbled together from others ideas and while I'm curious about the adventures that await, I'm not curious enough to put it on the TBR.

I'd recommend it for fantasy fans who are looking for something a little more old-school, but be patient with it.

With thanks to NetGalley for an audio copy

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