Overpowered by Kathryn McConaughy

The Synopsis:

Taliyah bat Shammai is fleeing a terrible crime. Though she has no hope of shelter, she must keep running—for the Avenger will be coming. Even losing herself in the mist-haunted hills cannot protect her for long. But perhaps other criminals can…
Yotam bin Yerubba’la has left his home, his only guide a cryptic dream. Endangered by a perilous secret, he soon finds himself among men with secrets of their own—in a place where trusting others may be his most serious mistake… or his best defense.
Cypress and his band have been mercenaries for a long time. Criminals all, they don’t trust easily and never reveal their hearts. But when a battle goes horribly wrong, each man must decide whether he fights for gold, for fame, or for something yet more rare…
Disguised as a boy, Taliyah finds the outlaw life to be full of more questions than answers. What are those strange tracks around the ruined houses? Why is Yotam so calm in the face of battle? Where are the rest of Cypress’ men? And who is the Avenger?
There may not be much time for Taliyah to find the answers, for war is about to ignite in the hills. And they all will burn…

I received this book from the author for the purpose of this review. All comments and opinions are entirely my own.

Review:

I’m not going to lie, this book really confused me. And I’m going to be nice, but I really didn’t care for Overpowered. I’m not even quite sure how I would explain the concept of the story to someone if they asked me to describe it.

The first issue that agitated me — so much —was in trying to pronounce the names of the characters and places. I love books that are set in different countries and I enjoy a good fantasy in which there are different languages, but as an English speaking reader, I’m not going to do the same type of research that the author did to write this book, which means there has got to be some familiarity in the story. The lingo used by these characters in their conversations was so far away from English, with no explanations or definitions within the text, that I couldn’t even follow what they were saying.

There is also some sort of religion (I assume to be based on Christian beliefs) that the characters all understand and reference in their conversations and actions, but I couldn’t determine the differences between the riddles that described their beliefs and their regular dialogue, so the little bit of speech that I could understand, I actually couldn’t understand because it made no sense. I spent so much time just trying to comprehend what I was reading that I couldn’t even follow the storyline.

I wanted to like Overpowered, I really did. It’s *very loosely* based on Snow White and it’s a clean, Christian fantasy. It seemed to have all the elements that typically make up some of my favorite books, but I just couldn’t get past the foreignness of the story. So I rate it 2 out of 5 stars.