Since Christmas, I have gained access to Kindle Unlimited, which gives people access to over a million books for only the price of the monthly subscription. Therefore, I decided to give one of the books on there a try, and I mostly wish I hadn’t.
“The Black Table” by Jade R. Evans is the first book in the “Knights of Caliburn University” series. This series is a paranormal fantasy series that is based upon the legend of King Arthur.
The main character is Gwenna Vale, who begins attending Caliburn University as a way to escape her family and her dark past. As her secrets start to tear apart the new life she built for herself, she learns that she isn’t the only person at the university with secrets.
Kingston, Kai, Lanz and Callahan are the beloved four fencers that make up Caliburn’s renowned and beloved fencing team. As everyone takes a step back from Gwenna, they seem to pull her closer. However, they have secrets of their own too.
The concept of this book is incredibly interesting by itself, but that wasn’t enough to make a good book. Unfortunately, there were more bad things within the pages of the book then there was good.
To start off, there were a few issues with the grammar in this book, especially with the dialogue. For example, some dialogue didn’t have an ending quotation mark. This made it sometimes hard to figure out where the character stopped talking and the description began.
Another issue within the book was the lack of translation for the Latin that was used. Given its inspiration and plot, it was no surprise that Latin would be used throughout the series, but it became mildly irritating every time I had to pull out my phone to translate the meaning of the words.
The translation and grammatical errors were not the only issues either. Some of the plot lines themselves felt very forced and unnecessary. For example, some of the romance plotlines felt unnecessary, especially because two of the men interested in Gwenna were originally incredibly interested in each other. Then, all of a sudden, the two men became very interested in Gwenna, it felt forced.
While there are some phrases that have translation, the majority did not, which made it unclear what was being said without translating it.
The book did have some good aspects, such as the plot twists. Many of the plot twists have subtle foreshadowing that you could miss if you weren’t paying close enough attention. Nevertheless, they were still shocking when they were ultimately revealed.
For example, when the mortal cup was revealed, it was shocking. It also made complete sense.
Overall, “The Black Table” had unique concepts and interesting plot twists, but they were not enough to make the overall book and series worth the fanfare.
