Review: Ori - The Lost Verndari by Oriana Star

Ori - The Lost Verndari by Oriana Star
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Interesting World Building

This book has interesting world building, even if it feels a little fuzzy around the edges, like it’s not quite fully formed. It’s in a world where humans aren’t living well and there are other species living in the world (it’s not clear why humans are poor and downtrodden or what the other supernatural creatures are). The Verndari are a race of magic users. At the age of 18 a female Verndari ‘awakens’ and her magic calls to her four mates. These mates provide stability for her magic and enhances the mates magic too.

We start the book with a female Verndari baby being hidden in the human foster care system to keep her safe from her father, by her mother. That girl is Ori and her experience of foster care is torturous (literally). She is in the midst of being thrown out of her foster home on her 18th birthday when she awakens and her magic pulses bring her into the Verndari fold, where things are still very precarious for her.

There are some interesting aspects to the plot, but, like the world building, it feels a little fuzzy around the edges. It feels like the author hasn’t really lived deeply in the story for long enough before finishing the book. However, it was definitely interesting enough to keep me reading until the end.

I liked Ori, I thought she was an interesting character. Living with physical and mental torment for most of her life and then being thrust into a magical world she doesn’t understand, is not easy. She is instantly given mates that she wasn’t expecting and told to learn magic quickly or she may die/be killed. She is strong and holds up to everything, probably a little too well to be believable. Everything happens too fast for her to cope as well as she does. It makes me feel less connection with her because she doesn’t feel quite real.

The other characters are also interesting and I wish we’d learn more about them. We were just given hints of who they are and what they are capable of. The insta-love aspect of the mate bond always drives me a bit nuts because magic can only over-ride so much human hesitation, surely? If you put my hesitation, on that front, aside, then the relationship between Ori and her mates is really sweet and supportive. Though I have to say the sex scenes were a bit formulaic for my liking.

All that being said, and I know it seems that there was a lot to criticise, I did really like the book. I just feel that it could have done with a really good editor. It needed someone to be ruthless and push the writer to cut back on what felt unnecessary and push forward what needed more fleshing out. It also needed a good proof reader because the use of ‘wondering’ instead of ‘wandering’ and ‘unemphatic’ instead of ‘unempathatic’ are just two of the examples that I remember off the top of my head. This had the potential to be a much better book and I hope that with practice and possibly really good beta readers the author finds her potential, because I can see the glimmers of a really good writer here.

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