DNF Review: Talented by Sophie Davis

Title: Talented (Talented, #1)
Author: Sophie Davis
Publisher: Dabber & Baehr
Rating: DNF (1 Star)
Paperback, 386 Pages
Published January 2012
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Summary: Block it out. Impossible for Talia Lyons. When you’re a Mind Manipulator, it’s hard enough to block the thoughts of others, let alone your own. Block it out. The pounding, siren-ready world Talia inhabits as she trains with her fellow Hunters, the country's top-secret covert operatives. The physical demands. The emotional toll. Block it out. The secrets that Talia’s boyfriend is hiding. Talia’s unbidden feelings of frustration and annoyance toward her teammate, the Casanova of the compound. The wondering why she cares what he thinks. Block him out. Ian Crane. The man behind the bloodshed marring Talia’s memories of her murdered parents. The man she’s determined to kill. Block it all out. Focus. Talented is an emotionally raw Dystopian Romance, about the life of a girl with extraordinary psychic powers, and what happens when a heart is torn between love and rage. 

I received a copy of Talented at BookCon this past May, and finally got around to finishing off my BookCon pile this past month. I was a bit hesitant at first because I am not really that into SciFi. There are a very limited amount of fantasy and SciFi books that capture my interest and manage to hold it, so I went into this book a tiny bit weary from the beginning. 

This book has a lot of world-building. A lot. I understand that with books that aren't realistic fiction, some world-building needs to occur. That part's obvious, because the writer has to make the reader understand all of the things that make the world different from what we know in the real world. But when the writer starts to info-dump and world-build for chapters on end, the reader begins to lose interest. And that's what happened with me.

I found my mind wandering while I was reading, because so much information was being loaded onto my mind at once that I wasn't processing much of it, and I was also wondering when the next part of the actual story (not the info-dumping and world-building) was going to take place. As I made myself continue reading (because this book deserved a fair shot just like any other), I felt more like I was reading out of obligation to get through the book than because I actually wanted to enjoy it. And that feeling is a major sign that a book needs to be DNFed. So, unfortunately, that's what I did. :/

In my opinion, a definite way to improve this book would be to cut back on the info-dumping. Even if the world takes a lot of building up, Davis could have definitely sprinkled the info in between scenes of the story, rather than squishing it all together in continuous pages of nothing but information on the world as the characters know it. A definite cutback on that would have made the reading much, much easier to get through.

All in all, I just feel that Talented was not the right fit for me in a book. I may come back to it in the future after getting back into the SciFi genre, and I definitely think that if you're reading this and feel discouraged, you should still give the book a try because your opinion may be different than mine. You are, after all, your own person. I'm bummed that I had to DNF this one, because I was excited and expecting a lot more. Oh well - maybe I'll like it better in the future. :-(

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