d_s_t_e's Wattpad Reviews

A Song in Olympus by Millosophy [Unavailable]

A Song in Olympus is a fantasy adventure about Millo Pallas, a son of Athena who had been forging a path for himself apart from his noble family until his mother the goddess makes an unexpected appearance. Suddenly, Millo is presented with the opportunity to win the title of the first male champion of Artemis and returns home for the first time in years to find it under the threat of imminent war.

I think that one of the most interesting and unique strengths of this book is its cleverness, both in dialogue and plot lines. Millo definitely has a well-fleshed out personality, and he really comes across as a lovable trickster. His dialogue especially contains well-phrased, clever lines that stick out like special little treats within the greater context of the story. There are also a number of clever lines of description and narration, and, altogether, it makes me draw a stylistic comparison to Oscar Wilde. That's not something that I see very often, and this is certainly the first time here on Wattpad, which makes it very enjoyable.

In terms of plotlines, I liked some of the clever twists played out by Millo, but I especially liked the cleverness and complexity of the political plotting and intrigue. It was just enough that I knew I would never have been able to come up with that and yet still got the rush of all the pieces clicking into place one by one until I understood it all perfectly. It's also mixed perfectly with characterization and emotional triggers for great effect.

There were also a lot of good descriptions throughout the book, several that really stood out to me as being excellent. The problem, however, is that there were other descriptions, and really phrases of all kinds, that fell completely flat. It was an odd experience for me as I was taking notes on the chapters because I would find myself praising a turn of phrase at one point and turning right around to criticize something at the next. Having descriptions and sentences that are particularly awkward or that just don't make sense is even more disappointing to find in what I would otherwise call a very well-written book. I'm honestly disappointed that I can't call it a well written book simply because of sentences like these and the large variety of misspellings and punctuation errors. To be fair, it's not that there was a very large amount of errors; I just found them to be particularly disappointing in an otherwise great book. In particular, I found myself wondering whether the author knew the correct way to spell "none" after the third time I found it missing the "e". When the writing style is meant to be one of the book's primary strengths, it's especially important to proofread and edit and perhaps even to have a second person check for those errors your own eyes just skip over.

My other criticism of this book is the simple fact that, after sixteen chapters, I feel as though I don't know what the main plotline is supposed to be. In the very beginning, I thought the book would follow Millo's adventures as he tried to become a champion of Artemis, but subsequent turns of events and perspective switches have left me thinking otherwise. Don't get me wrong, there is certainly no shortage of action and intrigue. There are plenty of open conflicts, but I'm missing one overarching drive to tie them all together. To be fair, I have read and enjoyed books with nontraditional plot structures (Middlemarch and War and Peace come to mind), and I think I could be satisfied with a plot structure similar to those in this book if only I could tell exactly what the main character wants.

Millo is a somewhat mysterious character, and it does occur to me that this might be intended to be a positive aspect of his character, making him interesting and intriguing. The problem that I have with that is that it becomes very harsh on the plotline. Why does Millo want to become a champion of Artemis? Does he want fame? Power? The respect of his family? I feel as though I don't know what he is trying to accomplish, and not knowing that makes it difficult for me to recognize his successes and failures, much less feel anything on account of them. In the other books I mentioned with nontraditional plotlines, each and every individual character who received attention was at the center of their own plotline. Each one clearly wanted something, perhaps even multiple things, and had that driving motivation to tie in readers' emotions and to provide that sense of direction that I'm really craving here.

At this point, I'd like to make few smaller points to wrap things up. I briefly mentioned this before, but I want to highlight again the details. Details, by definition, are small elements, but a few that are well-placed and well-thought out can really give a book that extra shine. The details I saw in this book contributed to the realism and brought the story to life simultaneously, and I generally thought that they were very well-done. A great example is the introduction of Millo's keensight power in chapter one: a wonderful gift from Athena that allows him to see with greater clarity, especially at night, which unfortunately means it also gives him headaches in the sun. This is a little detail, but it makes such perfect sense that it increases realism. I found it impressive because I think most authors simply throw in cool powers and never would have thought of how having them would actually affect someone.

Another smaller point is that there is some nice humor scattered throughout the story, which contributes some lighter moments. On the opposite side, there was at least one scene that I found to be absolutely gut-wrenching. This is a book that will make you laugh, think, and feel, and I find that to be a good combination.

In conclusion, after 16 chapters, this is a book that I would recommend. In spite of some of the things I mentioned, I did find it to be one of the better written books that I've found on Wattpad, and I find it hard to believe that it has less than 2,000 reads as of the time of this review. If the author goes back to edit and polish, I would gladly recommend it even more highly. Personally, I've enjoyed it enough that I'm going to be adding it to my personal reading list. Nicely done.

** Published in February 2016 **