Short Review
This book was dogshit.
It was so bad. It was incredibly painful. I really don’t have anything nice to say.
Where to begin? The dialogue? The giant plot holes? The pacing? How about the terrible writing ? There’s just so much to talk about.
Let’s start with the writing and descriptions.
A book can have great writing but have bad descriptions and the inverse and the book can still be somewhat enjoyable, however if both of the aspects are bad, your editor needs to stop you and sit you down. I find it hard to talk about one without talking about the other. This book clearly has bad writing written all over it but not just with plot devices and pacing but with the actual words on the paper. I really can’t stress enough bad these aspects are. You have no idea what any of the characters look like beyond age and gender. I can’t even tell you the main character’s eye color or any other identifying characteristics. The only thing that sets these characters apart are their clearly defined roles assigned to them by the author. That’s lazy as fuck. It’s such lazy and shitty writing. It is your job as an author to paint the story for the reader. It is lazy to make your readers do the work that you are supposed to do. How can you expect them to really resonate with a character and their cause if don’t even have a face for the revolution? There are literally no descriptors at all. It’s actually incredibly frustrating and sad because I feel like character creation is one of the best parts of writing. It’s the gateway to seeing how well your world and ideas work. That is someone interacting and navigating your ideal scenario. How can you cheap out on that?
Not only are the character descriptions lacking, but so are the environmental descriptions. I have no idea where anything takes place except in a swamp and a settlement somewhere. The world that they live on is not very well explained or thought out. Ness, you are on my worst writer list. All the reader has to go off is vague swamp and forest imagery. There comes a point in the story where Todd and Viola come across a birdlike creature and it’s barely described. We know nothing about the planet they live on. It’s bad enough you already can’t identify the main character from a police lineup, but now you are on a planet where you can’t tell where the sun rises or sets. No idea how time flows. Just a universe of fixed plot points that the characters walk to and experience and then move on to the next. It’s a planet in a science fiction novel, you need to describe what the planet looks like, this is the one genre where I feel like it really matters. Science is the wonders of the human mind fully realized. There are things that are hard to explain, we need imagery to better help us understand this foreign planet you’ve put us on. Plus this the first book in the series, you kind of need to set the scene very quickly especially if we are going to be traveling in it.
But that’s the thing, this author relies heavily on the reader to do the most important heavy lifting while he sits his ass on his thumbs dragging out the story. The pacing on this book makes me foam at the mouth. It was tortuous. There was no time for the reader or the characters to process or catch their breath with anything that happened. Todd was given something that could help not only him but the readers and other characters understand the main plot of the story. He could literally see it in the thoughts of men and instead of describing it to the reader, Ness chose to be vague about what was shown. It was worse than edging. It was like a ruined orgasm or better yet the disappointment of whiskey dick. You’re excited for some action, for some payoff of reading 40 pages of walking simulator, for something to make this book worth reading because you’re close to closing it for good and Ness knows this, just to give you nothing. He’s worse than a bad lover. All talk but when it comes down to it he can’t perform. It’s worse because he doesn’t even leave you all hot and bothered, just confused and wondering if you should put your clothes on or not.
The motivations of the characters were all so simple and not fleshed out at all. But that would make sense given that the reader is supposed to fill in most of the emotion when reading. The driving force behind the main character’s motives were hidden from the reader for whatever pathetic excuse Ness calls building suspense. Todd is already stupid, he can’t be unmotivated too. The entire time he’s traveling, he has no idea why, mainly because he can’t read, and because he’s too prideful, no one else can read it either. Only men are allowed to advance the plot in any meaningful way on this planet.
The villains weren’t much to be afraid of. Just bad for the sake of being bad. No real motivations except to be bad and cause chaos. It was all just so lacking and boring. They weren’t exciting at all. There was no surprise with them. They didn’t seem smart or cunning or had anything that could be a foil to the main character. Maybe manpower or weird freaky cultish mind control powers. Regardless, those differences are not really used in a way that makes me scared for the main character. Mainly because I was not attached to any character at all.
Lastly, the dialogue, shit from a butt. It was terrible and lacked depth. Since I can’t gather anything about the characters and what’s going on from the description and world building, I’m going to turn to the dialogue. That didn’t help either. It was all drivel on a page. Just words to move the story and the character along. Everything and nothing was being said all at the same time when everyone talked. Conversations that were meant to bring characters closer, underdelivered. I didn’t feel characters really understood each other when interacting.
Ratings/Final Thoughts
This book was just really underwhelming. I can’t believe I wasted my time reading this. I had to go to the library and pick up another book to read while reading this one so I could use a reminder of what good writing looks like.
Patrick Ness, count your fucking days. You’re lucky you got Tom Holland to star in the move adaptation. You got 50 Shades of Grey luck, like getting Beyonce have a song on the soundtrack and use it for the trailer. They’re so lucky the song was good and middle aged school moms need spice in their life. You have nothing.
You are a flop, please never write again. You’d be doing everyone a favor. You are my worst read of the year.
The Abode 