Soundless by Richelle Mead

Title: Soundless  Author: Richelle Mead  Date Read: June 2 2017 Published: November 10 2015 @ Razorbill Genre: YA Fantasy Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

“For the first time since this phenomenon started happening to me, I begin to understand the power it could have and why our ancestors mourned its loss. Every sound around me - the renewed pattering of rain, the wind in the leaves - all of it suddenly has a new meaning. I can see how these sounds don't interfere with the world so much as enhance it. The scope and potential are huge. It's like having a new color to paint with.” 

Continue Reading... I should probably start off this review by saying that I was determined to like this book. With the incredibly intriguing premise and the overwhelmingly negative reviews from people whose reviews I usually trust, I really wanted to prove Goodreads wrong on this one. And I did. But only kind of. Soundless is the story of Fei, a young apprentice living in a village where no one can hear. The village, which is on top of a mountain and isolated from any arable land or other villages, gets all of their food through a trading system with the township at the bottom of the mountain. The township sends the village food in exchange for gold mined by the villagers. However, they are barely able to produce enough ore to feed the village, and things are only getting more dire as some of the village are beginning to go blind in addition to deaf. When all hope seems lost, Fei awakes in the middle of the night to an unfamiliar sensation: sound. This leads her, alongside the miner and revolutionary Li Wei, on a quest down the mountain to convince the township to help their dying village. I enjoyed reading this story a lot, and I loved the beginning. It was really lovely to see through Fei's eyes as someone whose scope is limited, but who sees the immaculate beauty in everything. In addition to that, before the action really began to take off, the writing style was very pretty and whimsical, allowing for the reader to experience the world through Fei's artistic sensibilities. My only real complaint with this book (and sadly, it's kind of a big one) is that I don't think that the writing remained as strong as the story deserved. While the beginning was really beautiful and cinematic, I felt like the author really lost that as the action began and she started to describe a series of events rather than pausing for Fei's contemplations. The writing style just... didn't hold up. Especially when odd colloquialisms were thrown in, which didn't seem to match the character or the setting. For example, at one point Fei describes going "into survival mode" which... doesn't really seem like a turn of phrase one would use in ancient China?? There's also a point where she writes "I know this is difficult to hear" to her villagers who.... can't hear.... Of course, what she meant was that she knew it was difficult to accept the information, but it just seemed like a really odd phrase to use in a village that has been deaf for literal generations? Overall, I really liked the story and I loved Fei as a protagonist. She was strong, but also feminine, and those two things never seemed to contradict each other. I just wish the writing had been a little more elevated.