The Ingenious and the Colour of Life - J.Y. Sam - ★★★★.½

AUTHOR: J.Y. Sam

SERIES: The Ingenious Trilogy 

GENRE: YA Fantasy

RATING: 4.5 stars.

In a Nutshell: WOW! Doesn’t feel indie. Doesn’t feel like a debut work. Doesn’t feel much YA! Enjoyed almost all of it and eagerly awaiting the next in the series. This is the first of a trilogy.

Story Synopsis:

Milly Bythaway has always been told to hide her genius and dumb down her answers in school so as to blend in the background. Tai Jones lives as a homeless boy after his mother abandoned him. Calista Matheson has always known that she has only beauty and no intellect, until her crush Jake Winters unlocks her hidden potential for computers. After Jake suddenly disappears, Calista falls back on her computing prowess to find out what happened. Meanwhile, a mysterious old scientist contacts Milly and Tai. The teenagers are told a dark secret from their past – one that reveals the source of their intellect, and also brings to light a danger to their lives.

The book is written in the limited third person perspective of various characters.

Where the book worked for me:

🌹 I am not a big YA Fantasy fan. Nor did I like the cover much. What drew me in was the blurb. The plot was such that I couldn’t resist grabbing this despite my ARC backlog. Luckily, the author does complete justice to the potential shown and delivers on every promise. I loved the unique storyline.

🌹 Full marks to the prologue – perfect! (I have decided I am going to praise every book for an impactful prologue that doesn’t simply rehash subsequent events but generates the right level of curiosity for the plot.)

🌹 The book combines quite a few genres but does so without overpowering each other. Fantasy, sci-fi, drama, crime thriller, coming-of-age,… all are fairly well done.

🌹 I enjoyed how the author took time to introduce each of the key characters in the initial chapters. Rather than bogging us down with too many characters within a few pages, she goes into detailed backstories, one main character at a time. This makes it so easy for us to remember and understand them.

🌹 The main characters are amazing. I loved how the author allowed their individual personalities to shine throughout the book, rather than modifying their behaviour as per the needs of the plot. I was prepared to hate Calista as she seemed the typical bimbo stereotype at the start. Boy, was I wrong! She brings the perfect touch of humour to an otherwise serious story.

🌹 Though 400+ pages long, I didn’t feel its length for *most* of the journey. The writing is fast-paced and engaging.

🌹 There are quite a few animals in the story, and all of them, from the largest to the smallest, are memorable. At times, we get to read their third person povs as well. Of course, some of their perspectives are farfetched. But as this is a YA Fantasy, I yeeted my disbelief and went with the flow. Loved every single one of them!

🌹 The writing is just perfect. Lyrical where necessary, the story flows smoothly without going overly verbose or too plain.

🌹 There are myriad subtopics covered in the book because of the characters’ interests. But each is written in such a way that I couldn’t help but admire the author’s attention to detail. Be it music or genetics or computing or medicine, every topic feels like it has been handled by an expert in that field. At the same time, nothing feels like it has been infodumped. Simply brilliant!

🌹 The ending! It is a cliffhanger, but what a wonderful one! It does not leave the current arcs incomplete, and yet it creates enough of a suspense to make me want to throw away my entire TBR and rush to the second book. If only!

Where the book could have worked better for me:

🌵 The backstories of two of the characters (one towards the middle and one near the end of the book) were a bit too lengthy for my liking. While both were interesting, they caused me to lose my momentum and diluted the impact of the book. In all fairness, I did try to think of an alternate approach that might have worked better, but couldn’t do so for the second story. The first one could have been much shorter, thereby reducing the overall length of the book as well.

⚠ While the cover is good in its own way, I don’t think it represents the book properly. I, for one, wouldn’t have picked this up in a bookshop based on that coverart. Luckily, the blurb appealed to me, otherwise I would have missed out on this great read.

All in all, this wasn’t a perfect book, but it was a highly memorable one for me. It surpassed all my expectations and gave me an impactful storyline coupled with interesting characters, including a few animals, and some ethical dilemmas.

This book might work well even for adult readers, as long as you keep in mind that it was written for the teen crowd and you, the discerning adult reader, have to be forgiving of predictable plot points. 😉

The length and the target age group might make you assume that you can speed read your way through this, but I would recommend reading every page, There are plenty of hidden clues that you might miss out on if you zoom through this work.

Definitely recommended to Light Fantasy fans and YA fiction fans. This indie gem deserves a lot of attention. Waiting for Book Two!! 😍

I received a complimentary copy of this book from the author through ‘Voracious Readers Only’ and these are my honest thoughts about it.

The book is available on Kindle Unlimited.

Note: The content gets pretty dark at times, and there are a few animals deaths also. Sensitive readers might want to keep this in mind.