An odd fantasy adventure.

                                                                  "The First"
                                                             By: Lisa M. Green
                                                    Published: February 25, 2014
                                                                  326 pages

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. In no way does this affect either my review or my rating.

                                               Source Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

I'm not entirely sure what to say about this book. It might be just me, it probably is just me, but I was confused by this book. With a lot of books that are set in a different world with different laws and ways of living, the authors at least explain a little what the world is like and how the world works. 

Not with this book. With this book. I was very confused about how the world Ms. Green created worked. I was confused on who the Shadows were, on how their marriage practices worked, and especially on how their hierarchy worked. I understood that the Primaries were in charge, but there were so many of them that I wondered how they came to any sort of decision. It was several chapters into the book before I finally started to understand how the world worked at all. 

From the very beginning of the book, you knew that something was wrong, that there was a lot going on in their little village that didn't usually happen. The people's acceptance of their leaders, the Primaries, insistence that nothing was wrong, that everything was just fine, angered me. In a world where it seemed survival alone was extremely difficult, these things that were happening, and they were very large, very important things, would have made me question everything and everyone. I don't think that I could have stood by and just believed what the Primaries said just because they had never led us astray before. There's a first time for everythingttttiuuu.                                                    . And who knows, they could have been lying about everything for a very long time; they were just very good at covering it up. 

I did like the protagonist, Rinni, and I very much liked her great-mother (grandmother) Ganni and her mate, Brahdon. They reacted much the same way that I would have. Her twin brother was a little hesitant, but I think that it was because he was just more cautious and he wanted to think things through before he just believed whatever anyone told him. Even if the person telling him these things was his twin sister. I did like that about him very much. 

Overall, I found many parts of this book slow, tedious and very confusing, it is definitely the kind of book that you need to read all the way through in order to understand everything that was happening. It's not the kind of book that I normally would read, although the description made it sound like it was exactly the kind of book I would read. Unfortunately, it wasn't. It was far too slow and confusing for most of the book. But like I said, maybe it was just me.