Pokémon Book Reviews

"A Spirit's Journey" - by RolfTheAbra

A Spirit's Journey:

"A story, you say? Well, I know a few of those. Some of them are about me, and some of those are even true. This one's one of my favorites. It's how I came to be the Absol I am today. Of course, I didn't like it then, but that's how it always is with life. It's kind of funny that way. It starts with me running down the slopes of Mt. Coronet...

(This story has received the 'So good, someone stole it from me once' Award)

(This is an adventure story that takes place in the Game Universe with a mix of OC and canon characters.)

(This story is also submitted in the 2014 Watty Awards contest)"

Genre: Fanfiction

Ivy (@RiverIvy)'s review:

"A Spirit's Journey" is a Pokemon fanfiction that follows the journeys of a cold, troubled Absol named Spirit as well as of all the new characters he meets along the way. The reader watches along and enjoys their adventures through moments of twisting at the edge of their seat, tearing up, laughing out loud, and smiling at romantic moments.

Starting off, the writing itself, grammar and quality-wise, was great. I spotted practically no errors or typos along the entire story, and each sentence of each paragraph flowed along smoothly and naturally. I felt that the author managed to use a good amount of vocabulary while still making the reading pretty simple and easy to read, and while that doesn't matter much to me personally, it helps appeal to readers of all ages.

I also found the description to be excellent; it was vivid and had a colorful usage of words, however, for the most part, remained small and not a huge part of the overall book. In other words, the description was well-made but at the same time rather short – in this case, I wouldn't really consider that a con, because for a mostly action-packed book such as this one, too much description would really be ruining it.

For example, the very beginning scene with the main character running away from the pack of Ambassnsnow was detailed wonderfully. Everything, from the beauty of the mountains to the fright of the predators to the desperate fleeing actions of the main character, was captured with the perfect amount of words. On the other hand, though, much more dramatic scenes that were to come later on, contained a considerably less amount of description – which created the right balance.

I also feel that most of the characters were fleshed out in a very realistic and heart-capturing way. The prime example of this would be Spirit – every part of him, from his bitterness towards humans to his snappish character traits to his slow, subtle, yet steady character development, was amazing. Readers would be able to look at Spirit on the first page of the book and then compare it to the last, and see the differences in his nature and attitude, while still being able to recognize and appreciate the character for who he is. Rio and Lady Glacier are other shining examples of an ideal character.

Breath-taking, engaging battle scenes spread through out the story spurred the reader into anticipating all the tension and suspense in each chapter, as well as being generally well-written and exciting to read. Even the first scene, with the fighting of the main character against the Ambassnow, was impressive, and it only got much, much better as time went on.

I felt that one really big aspect of the story was how well it portrayed relationships between the Pokemon themselves, like their views on certain topics as well as their interactions. The way it was shown that wild Pokemon, such as Spirit, the main character, held a high amount of scorn towards bred Pokemon, was really interesting. It created a tension between him and other characters, which led to conflict and eventual development to the story. Among all these, relations and news that take place in the world of Pokemon builds out to almost a sort of politics. Impressive.