juliekelso

A poor man's Neverwhere. I'll admit that I stopped reading after 115 pages. I read several glowing reviews of this, saying it was going to rescue us in this, the time of no-more-harry-potter. And lookee! It has female protagonists! But no. A typical adventure/sci-fi premise: someone from our world gets transported to a different world and must save something/do a quest. a) It is, at least in the first 115 pages, entirely plot-driven. I know nothing about what separates the two main characters from one another--they're both young girls from London, and other than physical differences, they talk alike and seem to think alike. The other characters are defined for you; they do not have characters and backstory, they just are. Sometimes their "properties" and abilities are defined, but that's about it. The 115 pages I read were propelled entirely by one plot point after another. One of the great things about The Golden Compass series is that the characters are so rich and familiar--there is love and compassion and yearning--those are what drives the narrative. b) Sadly, I think this book suffers from "sci-fi syndrome". Given that I have no personalities to sink my teeth into, I need to be able to grab onto some part of this world. In many sci-fi books--and this is no exception--the author is so busy cleverly creating new creatures, new worlds, and new vocabularies, that they don't notice they've given readers a whole lot of homework. When a paragraph contains 5-6 made up words describing scenery, characters, or the quest, the reader (me) gets bogged down. I felt like I was slogging through a foreign language. Neil Gaimen's Neverwhere treads similar territory--London, but not--and does it in a much more character-driven, riveting, terrifying way. If you're looking for an un-London experience, go read that instead.

2022-11-14 18:46