Review: The Cleansing by Nicola Johnson

Title: The Cleansing
Author: Nicola Johnson
Release Date: June 4, 2015

Adam’s world was turned upside down when he found out he was a royal descendent of the Torian Empire. The empire fell to its knees when the Casothic Army exiled his grandfather King Blake, for crimes against Prince Charles of Cathos. King Blake along with thousands of his loyal followers escaped to Earth. Blake stayed in hiding for eighteen years gathering Intel and building up a new army. He is now ready to take back the thrown.

Before Blake returns to wage war on Torin he decides that it is imperative to rid the race of the mix breed children. In his mind the mingling of Earth and Torian blood will weaken his perfect race. He refuses to accept the devolution of his kind. He decides to cleanse the race in order create a pure blood society.

Blake knows in order to win over his people he must begin the cleansing in the royal family. He targets his Grandson Adam, the first half breed Prince. He knows he must assassinate Adam before his eighteenth birthday, the time when Torian minors become aware of their true power. When his attempt fails he sends out trained assassins to murder him. Adam is on the run, fighting for his life, and is determined to uncover the truth about why the empire fell.

I took some serious issues with this book.  The main one that I had was that this book was not ready to be published.  It made it difficult for me to read.

Throughout the book, I was going back and forth between liking and disliking the main character Adam.  I don't think we're supposed to dislike him, but his raging teenage hormones make it kind of difficult to take him seriously at time.  He is, however, also a pretty comical character.  And in the end I did end up enjoying him as a character.  I suppose he just grew on me.

So this is a criticism that I don't generally give.  This book really could have benefited from being much longer.  The pacing felt kind of awkward at times.  And it seemed that things were just glanced over.  Had more gone into world-building, background, and bits of the plot, the book would not only have been longer, but I think it would have worked better.  On a similar note, some things seemed to be accepted a little to easily for my tastes.  Or not expanded upon.  "Oh I'm special and have powers? Look at that I just shot lightning without any training!"  Yeah... Maybe a little bit more on some of these things would have worked.

It also seemed a stretch to me that the king would not suspect Andrew.  He was high up susposed to be capturing Adam.  And he supposedly kept failing.  If it were me, my mind would first go to the person who is failing and ask, "why is this person failing?"  But maybe the king does suspect something and he'll deal with Andrew in the next book?  One can only hope.

My overall opinion

I wasn't enthralled.  I think that this book could have been so much better.  But I always urge you to try it out yourself.