A review of The Crimson Orb, by Joyce Hertzoff

The Crimson Orb by Joyce Hertzoff
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Crimson Orb, reads as if the author was perpetually hungry for adventure, and a croissant. However, because of too much ‘telling and not showing’ (a sin in this perspective), and an overall plot that is rather formulaic, the result is rather bland.

Along with the girls-don’t-get-to-do-boy-things trope we have a standard missing person search plot-line. Everything doesn’t go as predicted. Except it does, if you are the reader. At no point in this novel did I feel the characters were threatened in any tangible way. And that is unfortunate.

Especially unfortunate, because clearly the author is capable. There were opportunities lost here, hits and misses, and you can feel the writer’s burgeoning ability to set the scene. The biggest of those for me, were those what could have been used to ground the reader in the story. Recently, I read a bit on Tolkien, on how he used food (and the love of it) to make the characters relatable. It could be a talking point. It could have lead to some deep interactions. But for me, it wasn’t, and so we are left with just the crumbs.