Review: The Survivors by Amanda Havard

The Survivors by Amanda Havard

Copy Courtesy of Amanda Havard
Already Published

Summary
The Survivors are the only ones left of a group of children who were accused of being witches in the Salem Witch trials. Their fate was banishment to the unforgiving wilderness rather than executions, and these fourteen have survived since then. Sadie, is a descendant of the original fourteen, and she is the first to leave their compound in search of what the wider world has to offer.

Commentary
This is possibly the first book in a long time which dealt with Christianity where I thought that part of the story was interesting, and that came as a pleasant surprise. So, my overall tepid feeling about the book didn't come from that quarter as it might for many other books.

A big part of the problem was that I didn't find the mystery of Sadie to be all that mysterious. From the beginning of the book, I kept thinking to myself "You claim that Sadie is immortal, how does she know that?" The answer to that question is apparently a big mystery, which I thought was unnecessary because there can really only be a few answers that make any sense.

I also got thrown out of the story by some inconsistencies, which while some readers may not notice, I noticed. I consider myself to not be that great at catching inconsistencies within a story; I'm much more of a find misalignment with reality kind of person so I was dismayed to be finding the internal ones.

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One of the inconsistencies is a scene of attraction stated as "heat could be felt coming off him" or something like that. The problem is, these supernatural beings are supposed to be whatever temperature their surroundings are. They essentially can't generate their own heat... so using a phrase like that while the characters are sitting around in a cool night makes no sense to me.

I also didn't care for the fact that the rise of vampirism was from people having children out of wedlock. That sort of mythology just rubbed me all sorts of the wrong way.

I think if the story flow had been changed, I might have liked this book better since the writing itself is not bad.

Star Rating: 2.5/5.0

For an explanation of the Star Rating go here.

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