The Recollection of The Collapse

This book suffers heavily from shock value with no explanation, flat characterization, and waiting too long to explain a lot of different Bizzare things. The first half of the story moves pretty quick, with the early chapters feeling very contrived. If it’s a case of “Oh this didn’t happen”, it’s never explained in story that the early chapter events didn’t happen, and it’s never acknowledged in proper by the main character that reality doesn’t feel real. After the first half of the story, is a very jarring cut to a whole new group of people we’ve never seen, who (as of now) have unexplained magical abilities. It’s fine to have some mystery, but I would expect at least a quick explanation to the one woman they just met (Catherine) in order to properly explain it. The characters are all extremely one-note and one-dimensional, with nothing really compelling me to like them at all. Sometimes they even act weirdly psychopathic with no explanation or backstory given. The only two somewhat compelling characters are Edward and Lauren, but only because the implications of their actions is infinitely more interesting then what they actually do. I think this story heavily requires a revision. Many of the plot beats need foreshadowing to keep the readers attention, while also allowing them to understand that the Bizzare situations are actually being caused by something important. The tone changes way too quickly without any proper transitions, and the setting scale change too quickly as well, giving readers whiplash at times. Both the tone and setting scale heavily require the author to understand how he wants to overall story to proceed. Finally, characters need some depth, especially the main ones. The only characters with some depth are Edward and Lauren, and they only have depth because I can infer how they feel. Finally, the spelling and grammar is in desperate need of being fixed, there are way too many spelling and grammar errors for me to give this book above 3.5, even if I wanted to. Most positives I can say are that the ideas and the lore SOUND nice, but are executed in ways that make me desire either more explanation or more depth from the characters to take advantage of the lore.