d_s_t_e's Wattpad Reviews

Pokémon Chronicles IV: Legend of the Sleeping Solar by SGmijumaru [Unavailable]

A little intro before I begin: this review is going to be a bit different from the ones I usually write. Why? Well for starters, it's the longest completed book I've ever written a review of. On top of that, the author specifically asked me to be really tough on it. I want to state, for the record, that I am being more critical than I usually am; if I wrote all of my reviews at this level, there would probably be quite a few books on Wattpad that I would tear apart. Conversely, if I were writing this review at my normal level, it would sound more positive. I also want to make clear that I don't ever lie or consciously sugar coat things in the one case and I don't bash or provide harsher than necessary criticism in the other. The difference is in expectations and attitude – essentially, I am writing this review from the perspective of expecting more from it than I usually do from fan fictions on Wattpad.

I am going to try to be as honest as possible and not leave out any substantial criticisms I might have. Obviously, with a book that's around 200,000 words long, it is practically impossible to provide a perfect account of every single thing I liked or disliked while reading it, but I'm trying to include all of the major ones and leave out the fact that there's an unnecessary comma in the third sentence of the second paragraph of the epilogue or that I thought it was pretty sweet when Beautifly used Morning Sun that one time in that one chapter.

As always, I am also writing this review from an unbiased and objective perspective, focusing on whether or not the writing is good according to the standards that I know and have been taught rather than providing commentary based upon my personal feelings and opinions. There's no possible way to eliminate my personal experience of reading it entirely, as reader experience is a very important aspect of enjoying a story and my own experience is the only one I have to go on, but I try to keep it in proper proportion and write about it with the knowledge of how my perspective may differ from that of the average reader.

Also note that, due to all of these things and to the length of the story, there's no good way for me to review the book in detail and in an organized way without going over events that happen later on, and it would be very challenging to me to first draw a line as to what constitutes a spoiler and then keep track of what might or might not cross it. So this will be your first and only warning that there will be spoilers throughout. I'm going to be dropping them left and right, wherever they would be helpful or necessary to the points I'm making. I hope that all of that is understandable.

Pokémon Chronicles IV: Legend of the Sleeping Solar follows the journey of a twelve year old Buneary named Kayla who goes to a school for extraordinary Pokémon and eventually finds herself in a situation larger than anything she could have anticipated. She makes friends and enemies, learns her true power, and ultimately finds herself tasked with a huge mission to save the world.

One thing to be noted about this story right off the bat is its complexity. There are a lot of characters, from Kayla and her friends to the numerous enemies and leaders of Netherworld to supporting characters, all of whom had their own unique personalities and a very large number of whom also had their own detailed back stories and character motivations. The story itself was also complex, with many, many new elements being introduced throughout, some of which were mysterious or just a hint of an element to come. One thing that really impressed me about this book was that almost every single one of those elements was actually wrapped up appropriately, even the ones that I was sure the author must have forgotten about. Kari's suspicious coughing and breathlessness is explained many chapters later, the mysteries seen at the bottom of the spring in the junkyard become important when you least expect it, and characters barely seen since the very beginning of the book make a major return before the ending. Even the elements that I thought were mistakes or a result of poor writing turned out to actually be hints at coming plot twists, like the fact that the teachers seemed unrealistically harsh. This must have taken a lot of careful planning and attention to detail, especially in a work of such a scope.