The Ill-Made Mute by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

I thought this book was super frustrating. I was really excited to read it based on the description of it and it started out well. There are soooo many amazing elements in this book:

• Winged, flying horses that walk on the clouds with the help of these cool magnetic-y horseshoes.
• Ditto -magnetic-y pirate ships that fly through the air.
• the protagonist is a mute foundling, face scarred beyond recognition with no memory of how he/she came to be this way, no memory of the past.
• he/she was raised as a boy, only to discover early on in the book that she is in fact a girl.
  
• these crazy, awesome "unstorms" where some kind of magnetic or electric disturbances cause people to feel either extreme fear or extreme elation. Crazy things happen during unstorms -- pictures of scenes long past appear in mid-air, psychedelic colors whirl around the forest...
  
• Wights. The entire wilderness of this world is populated by mythical creatures that run from helpful to mischievous to truly dangerous.

What's really frustrating is that with all these amazing and interesting elements, none of them is ever treated with any depth. Early on we learn that the foundling has a strange talent for calming the eotaurs (the winged horses). Do we ever hear of this again? Nope. Just an interesting, unrelated fact. When the heroine discovers she is in fact a she, one might think this would be a huge revelation? Perhaps it would be explored? Nope. She thinks about it for a page or so and then just kind of starts wearing dresses. And the wights -- oh my god -- the fricking wights! At first it's cool, these wights are interesting supernatural creatures, but there are soooooo many of them. The structure of this book is as follows:

1. a little bit of the main plot happens on a page or two
2. wade through 10 pages of random adventures with wights that don't relate to the main plot.
3. Repeat.
4. almost ready to throw the book down from boredom...
5. a little bit of information on the plot or characters, sucked back in!
6. 50 pages of random wights.
7. Repeat, repeat....
8. Fabio appears. Literally. The main character's love interest is Fabio, complete with neverending descriptions of his flowing, glinting hair (I'm not kidding) and a spirit animal (a hawk) that is his traveling companion.
9. More fricking wights.
10. One page of resolution and a cliff-hanger.
    

I mean, I liked the main plot a lot, maybe I'll try to read the next book in the trilogy at some point, because I really do want to know what happens next and to find out the answers to the main character's mysterious past. But don't start reading this if you don't want be really bored 90% of the time.