'Numinous' is the story of two kingdoms and a prophecy.

Does that sound familiar? It does.

But let's elaborate. Our protagonist is a girl named Kiara. I don't know her last name, so that's probably not important. Anyway, Kiara used to be a sort-of normal school girl, well, if you look past the fact that she has healing powers (and, later in the book, even more powers). The aforementioned prophecy wrecks the life she knows and prompts her to travel to the kingdoms to fight the ruiner king Khuzuhoso.

There are a lot of clichés going on here. I mean, come on. Come on. This is the plot of so many books I've reviewed at this point. Sure, they all differ slightly from eachother, but when cut to its bare essentials, this is what we're left with. Please. Not that it's an entirely bad plot, but the thing is: with a dime-in-a-dozen plot like this one, you need good characters to carry it.

I didn't see a lot of that.

First off, what is up with that family of Kiara's? They only seem to appear when it's convenient to the story. They're important to Kiara, aren't they? So let them appear in her memories. In fact, let her have memories! Show those! I can see what she does in the book, but it feels like I'm watching a puppet in a show. There are no feelings in it, no memories, none of the things that would make me relate to these characters as actual humans. And no, don't tell me about them: show them. This story contains telling, yes, but very few things are being shown to me.

Secondly, while Aiden and Jacob have had some development (though they stubbornly stick to their archetypes), no other character feels… developed enough. They're like pieces of cardboard, designed to help the protagonist move forward. That's not what characters should be. Take Elis, for example. She's there, but she doesn't do much and I barely know her, even after 40 chapters. She doesn't have a voice, she doesn't have chemistry… she's just sort of there, only appearing or adding something when it's convenient, and she's just an example. Characters appear and then aren't mentioned for a long time, as if they've ceased to exist. That creates loose ends in the plot, which are rather frustrating.

And did I mention that the absurd amount of powers some characters have make some of them veer dangerously close to Mary/Gary Sue territory? Because that's a thing.

The GPS is… a little disappointing. While the mistakes grow less numerous with each passing chapter, they remain present like a constant, sharp thorn in my side. Weird punctuation, extra words, missing words… I want to see editing, and a lot of it at that.

I would like to end on a more positive note, though, because there were indeed some things I liked. The kingdoms themselves, like Mapprierr, contained some rather interesting concepts, like the weapons and the gems and all those things. In terms of worldbuilding, I did consider those to be decent, though I still stay with my belief that those also feel like plot devices sometimes.

All in all, a story with some interesting concepts, though with a rather poor execution the way it is now. Don't worry, though, because that just means there's room for improvement! I believe that every story can potentially be something with a little more effort and practice, and I hope this story will one day live up to its full potential. Those weapons really were cool.

Rating: 3