THIS WAS SUCH A HARD BOOK TO RATE AND I STILL FEEL KINDA GUILTY ABOUT IT. But as much as I like Tessa Gratton as a person (or who she appears to be as a person)--alas, I cannot tell a lie.

I've mentioned before that I feel like it's hard not to compare Tessa to her critique partners and buddies, the fabulous Maggie Stiefvater who's probably my favorite YA author at the moment, and poetic, eerie, amazing Brenna Yovanoff. It's not that Tessa isn't capable of greatness. I know she is, because I saw it in the Stiefvater/Yovanoff/Gratton anthology, The Curiosities.

Unfortunately, while I've raved about the other two and given both of them five-star reviews, Tessa just hasn't hit that specialness she's shown in short stories through her novels. They've all fallen a bit short, and I just can't put my finger on why.

By all rights, The Lost Sun should have been right up my alley. It had Norse mythology and an alternate universe and teenagers kissing. The worldbuilding was, by the way, rather effective. I felt like I could buy this universe Tessa had created, and it was by far one of the best things about the book. The story itself was brilliantly creative. The characters are where it tended to fall apart.

I think that I expected a little bit more humor and tongue-in-cheek-ness from TLS. Probably because when I thought "Baldur and road trips", I thought of Libba Bray's great great great Going Bovine (which was nothing like TLS plot-wise, but it did have Baldur and a road trip). And when I thought about alt-Norse mythology, I thought of the quirky, witty Marvel version of Norse mythology. And I'm not even much of a Marvel fan. (I just like Thor a lot.) So, yeah; Tessa had a lot of expectations stacked against her, and maybe that isn't fair.

Maybe I just wasn't in the mood for a hero like Soren, who brooded and brooded until I was just all brooded-out. The guy had destiny stacked against him, and a lot of anger issues, and his dead murderous father somewhere in the background... It was just one thing after another. Same goes for Soren's love interest, Astrid. Or so I think. Astrid, aside from her dead mommy issues and her sepia eyes, which were mentioned all the time (an editor really should have caught that; "sepia" seemed like a weird word choice for an eye color, and certainly not one that should have been mentioned more than once) was a whole lot of nothing. She was a "spiritual" sort of character, which, as it always does, translated to vague and wispy.

Really, though, there wasn't a whole lot to Soren either, once you got past the brooding and the angst. I never really got why he was interested in Astrid, or why he wanted to do much of anything. (Unless it had to do with his dad. I read a lot about Soren's daddy issues.)

The thing is that there was so much dark drag to this one that even the better moments--anything that had to do with Glory, a girl with a lot of bite--drowned in the gray. (Or rather, the sepia.) I lost interest about halfway through and forced myself through the rest. I really shouldn't have had to do that.

Hopefully, Tessa can channel the awesome she infuses her short stories with into her novels. But with three out and counting, she hasn't done it yet.

The Cover: Sadly, this cover is also a dud. What is with putting faces on covers, and what is with those faces being so cartoony and ridiculous? 2/5