Book Review: Rylen by Morgan Wylie

Rylen by Morgan Wylie
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Isn’t it disappointing when you see a book with lotsa stars from excited reviewers but you can’t see why the fuss? This is not a good read. What in the world are you Rylen Lovers seeing here to warrant your reviews? I would love you to share the edition you have, mine is crap.

Rylen is a crime against readability. The writing and story quality are poor, and ideas and vocabulary lack understanding at a basic level. A shining example is an illogical suggestion that someone be ‘gutted and lynched’. Wait! You are asking if this is a warranted whinge but how dumb does it sound to sugar and honey a coffee. Ridiculous, right? So yes, this is a huge problem for me. Why gut someone and then hang them? Being drawn and quartered is an agonizing death. Dragged and lynch is worthy torture-some ending. There is an escalation in events in these instances because capital punishment doesn’t save its subject from its purpose.

While my nitpick of marrying two redundant and nullifying ideas might be silly blithering, the crimes here only become more severe. [Introducing evidence: Goodness, NO. Stop]

They often got teased about being one “bad brother” and one “good brother,” but if anyone knew them at all, they’d know that if anyone was the “bad one,” it was angelic-looking Lucius. He had a streak about him that you did not want to encounter if you were on what he consider to be the “wrong” side.

It is distracting as hell to see all those “evaluators” among the obnoxiously misused “quotes” and “misplaced commas,”.

For a moment I found the backstory in Prologue interesting but it quickly grew muddy and contradictory. [I introduce evidence: WTH] Initially Rylen is ten years old, then only paragraphs later, he’s seven. More confusing, Chapter One establishes that he had been bitten two years prior to him running away which screws the numbers up more.

Rylen’s story as written is along the line of this:

He was bitten at five years old–or perhaps eight. At the age of seven–or possibly ten–he saves a friend from death, exposes himself, goes on trial, and is sentenced to death. His younger brother Simmon is reported to be five on both occasions his age is stated; clearly Simmon’s age is more stalwart than Rylen’s yo-yoing years spanning the same page. The wee brother’s intellect is far more advanced than Rylen’s, since Rylen doesn’t get why evil, supernatural is bad. Simmon–understanding all the implications of vigilante, religiously conservative, nutjobs seeing Rylen as the devil–cleverly stages a distraction by-means-of arson to rescue his older-not-so-clued-in brother.

Considering Rylen’s sliding scale youth, the nutjobs may be onto something. For the sake of mathematical factoring though Simmon is comparably five if Rylen is seven, but then eight when Rylen is ten. I put that out there so we don’t have to put Simmon on trial for sorcery since he is merely a child prodigy.

…and knives do not have holsters; just saying.

Morgan Wylie I find you guilty of a shabby book. You are charged with one-star review for Rylen, you have the option to improve with a later edition. Please proofread your book, write a second draft, get it edited, beta-read, write a third draft, and resubmit.

If you are hungry for a good shifter novel let me suggest you check out something else.

Recommendations Based on This Read: