Started: 20/05/19
Finished: 28/05/19
Spoilers: Yes.
Not gonna lie. I’m a bit puzzled as to why this won both the Hugo award and the Nebula award. I mean this isn’t a terrible book by any standard but . . . it’s just so bare, bland even.
It’s 169 pages and somehow squeezed in there is an excellent idea poorly executed and a murder mystery. I don’t know why these books are so short. If they were double the page length they’d be so much more room for expansion, development, character growth, world-building and an ending that wasn’t utterly rushed.
To me, this felt so much like a great idea going really well with good pacing. Suddenly the author gets to page 150 and decides to wrap it up. Was she running late or something?
Characters
Tbf to the author, there’s some good representation in here. Naturally, not all girls are heterosexual and it was nice to see this displayed in such an unapologetic manner.
As far as the characters themselves go, I wanted to like them, I just didn’t know enough about them. They were far too defined by the world’s they’d visited. These children existed before they found fantasy worlds and presumably they all had personalities before finding these worlds.
It would have been interesting to see a little bit of the characters before so we the readers could compare their personalities and behaviour before and after to have a truer understanding of how these worlds affected them.
I also would have really liked to see more of how they were coping back in the real world, the subtle ways in which they were slowly reverting back to old habits from before their disappearances.
Again this is something that could’ve been explored were the book longer.
Plot
Honestly, this book really didn’t need the murder mystery. In fact, that entire plotline destroyed the credibility of the book. This would have been so much better if it was simply about the children readjusting to reality, almost like a rehabilitation clinic. It could have been something so beautiful and poignant. A story of friendship and self-discovery, finding our own realities and writing our own stories.
But no, it’s okay let’s just decapitate some kids instead, it’s far more fun. *eye-roll*
I guess I just wanted and expected so much more, having seen so many great reviews for this book. I think the true reality here is that people aren’t actually in love with this book, but are in love with the idea of this book. We’ve all opened a cupboard door as a kid and wished a whole world sat inside, waiting to be explored, or crawled under the covers and hoped we could crawl out the other side and find ourselves somewhere very different.
This book, in a sense, ticks some childhood box of fulfilment, and like many others, I love the idea of this book, but not the book itself. What a shame it wasn’t executed to it’s fullest potential.
I won’t say too much about the ending as I don’t want to lay spoilers down like bear traps, but the ending is so incredibly rushed I ended up skimming it. It was literally just a summary of the events that followed the conclusion. It was anti-climactic and borderline boring. And the stuff with Nancy was unbelievably unsatisfying to me.
Fuck it, I’m doing spoilers, after all - why did she have this whole inner monologue about finally feeling like she belonged? She’d planned her life and was going to spend it with Kade and try to be as happy as she could be. She’d finally made a decision to prioritise her herself and her well-being. Then her door suddenly opens and she throws it all away and buggers off anyway. So I ask again, what was all that about? It would have been so much better if she turned her back on her door. She found somewhere, in reality, she can feel at home and be herself, but hey, doesn’t matter cause her door came back.
To summarise. Unsatisfying ending.
Setting
All set within the school, but the school, other than the odd room here and there, is not described at all. I had moments of confusion, thinking one moment the house was just the size of a grand traditional American-style house, and other times thinking it must actually be a mansion.
It’s just not explored - at all.
Another thing I would have liked were the book longer, would be a deeper exploration of the worlds the children visited. Not necessarily going to these worlds for real, but to really see them come to life through the children's’ memories and descriptions. Some are briefly explained, but never in any great detail that brings the worlds’ to life. They never felt like real legitimate places that the kids had been to because they were nothing more than vague stories brushed over during group chat sessions.
Writing Style
Is this middle-grade? Because it pretty much reads like middle-grade.
Other than being totally rushed at the end, I generally liked the writing style. It was easy to read, if not a little bland, a little clinical. The pacing was also pretty good (until the end).
Admittedly, it lacked in any in-depth descriptions and the dialogue was blocky and dry. It wasn’t believable at all and was not how teenagers speak. There was something robotic to the dialogue which almost made it hard to read at times, and even harder to visualise.
Final Impression
So I know that was a bit of a rant review, but the book was okay. Not bad but not that great either. Just okay. I already own the next two books so I do think I’ll be trying the second one, especially seeing these books are so short, so why not.
If it doesn’t improve, however, I doubt I’ll read the third. I just have too many others sat on my TBR.
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