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Jessica Rubinkowski swings for the fences.

Overall
4 out of 5 stars
Performance
3 out of 5 stars
Story
5 out of 5 stars

Reviewed: 03-04-21

If I had to describe The Bright and The Pale in a single word, it would be this; Gripping. Thankfully, I'm not limited to a single word, so please indulge me as a gush about what is in my opinion, a home run of a debut novel.

Rubinkowski sets up and delivers a fast paced, engrossing narrative, with a diverse cast of characters each with their own hidden motivations that are drip-fed throughout the story- leaving you unsure of who exactly to trust and building ultimately to this tense and trembling climax. There will be characters that you love, characters that you hate, characters that you love to hate, and characters that you hate to love. Everyone feels believable and grounded within their own reality, and for me a character that I hated at first became the most tragic before that gripping final line.

The Bright and the Pale is not a story that I wanted to put down, at just over nine hours long, this is the first audiobook that has held my attention so perfectly that I listened to it in a single sitting, and as a fantasy genre fan, I found the setting to be remarkably refreshing. Heavily inspired by Slavic culture and mythology- the story felt new because it wasn't styling itself in the same cultures as hundreds of other fantasy novels and stories. While fans of the fantasy genre might be able to guess some of the later story beats- I guessed two of them -there are still plenty of surprises to be had.

My sole issue with this audiobook is sadly, the narration. Carlotta Brentan reads this tale with what to me sounds like a sad and desperate tone- which I feel doesn't correctly match the tone of the story itself. Further, for the first few hours of the performance, the different voices of the characters aren't completely distinct enough to differentiate themselves, and more than once in the first third of the story, I had to go back and relisten to understand who had said what during a dialog. This issue does sort itself out before the halfway mark, which I am so grateful for- as the latter half of Rubinkowski's debut novel is a thrilling tale to behold.

On the whole, The Bright and The Pale has given me the gift of being able to relive the grip of a good story not wanting to be put down- while listening to this story, I was reminded of my time with Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games and Veronica Roth's Divergent; desperately wanting to consume more of the story while simultaneously praying that the story wouldn't end. I for one, will be waiting eagerly for the sequel.

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