Blog Tour: The Catalyst by Tracy Richardson

Hi all my Bookworms!

My name is Chiara and I am a Bookworm.

How are you all?

Today is Blog Tour day.  I haven’t done many blog tours.  This would actually be my second and I am going to try and not let this one put me off forever.

Lets just say that I didn’t enjoy this book, but those details are for the review.

Goodreads

Title: The Catalyst

Author: Tracy Richardson

Publisher: Brown Books Publishing Group

Date Published: 2nd June 2020

Format: e-book (gifted)

Pages: 248

Genre: Sci-fi, Fiction, YA

Rating: ⭐⭐

Blurb: Marcie Horton has a sixth sense. Not in the “I see dead people” way, but . . . well, maybe a little. She feels a sort of knowing about certain things that can’t be explained-an intuition that goes beyond the normal. Then there was that one summer four years ago, when she connected with a long-departed spirit . . . But nothing that incredible has happened to Marcie since.
This summer, Marcie is spending time working at Angel Mounds, the archaeological dig her mother heads, along with her brother, Eric, and his girlfriend, Renee. The dig is the site of an ancient indigenous civilization, and things immediately shift into the paranormal when Marcie and her teammates meet Lorraine and Zeke. The two mysterious dig assistants reveal their abilities to access the Universal Energy Field with their minds-something Marcie knows only vaguely that her brother has also had experience with. Marcie learns how our planet will disintegrate if action is not taken, and she and her team must decide if they are brave enough to help Lorraine and Zeke in their plan to save Mother Earth, her resources, and her history. It looks like the summer just got a lot more interesting.

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Before I dive in, I must say first that I was gifted this book in exchange for an honest review.

I think I said already that I didn’t particularly enjoy this book.  There are many, many reasons for that, some of which I will get into here.

I didn’t enjoy the writing style. It reminded me of when I used to be active on Scribophile. A lot of comments I used to see around the site would say things along the lines of ‘show, don’t tell’.  And this book gave me the same feeling.  The author was telling me things rather than building a description that created a mental picture.  I realised when I finished the book that there weren’t many of the characters that I could accurately describe in any detail.  And it was the same with the settings.  In my head a lot of the action took place in a void where the surroundings were invisible.

The plot.  This book had potential.  Even now when I have finished the book, I can still see it’s potential.  I can see the bare bones of the book, the plot points that the author started out with, and they could have been so much more.  I feel disappointment more than anything for what this book could have been.

The blurb had me wanting a coming of age book, where these teens discover their own powers, guided by these two masters and ancient native American sprits.  I wanted a journey of self discovery.  I wanted magical powers all controlled by the powers of their thoughts.  I wanted teamwork.  I wanted teen angst and I wanted maybe a little teen romance.  I wanted a fantasy book.

I got a book that wasn’t exactly sure what it was.  There were elements of sci-fi.  There were elements of fantasy.  There was a lot of talk about the environment.  There were even deities from most major religions.  There was some romance.  This book was trying to be too many things.

In my opinion, sci-fi and fantasy are two things that don’t naturally go together.  They can work together (I’m not saying the can’t), but generally I think that books, film or tv, have to be one or the other.  It is hard to blend them both together successfully.  I couldn’t think of many examples where it had happened.  And dragging the reader between the two genres is slightly headache inducing.

On a plus side I did learn a lot about fracking.  All the pros, all the cons. The damaging effects, why energy companies want to do it, and why people don’t want it on their land.  I learnt a lot.

I think if the book hadn’t tried to be so many things it would have been better.

I could go into a lot of other things about this book, but that would turn into a rant rather than a review.  And I would like to end on a positive.

That positive being the intrigue in the book.  The book kept me reading.  It kept me turning the pages.  I wanted to know where it was going, if my questions would be answered.  I’m not going to go into the result, but I think that the level of intrigue that was created in the book, the level of page-turning-ness (yes, I know, not a word) is something great.

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If you read this, let me know what you think, and if you agreed with my assessment.

I will be very curious to see what this author does next.

Stay home. Stay safe.

And, until next time, happy reading.