Apparently everyone only has eyes for eyes having eyes for things. XD
I loved the premise of this story and the actual plot and characters were well written. Well, maybe. Perhaps I’d give it all a 4/5 rating.
The age-old premise and absolute dream of an author: Fictional characters transported into our real world just as they are. Plus, you get to meet them! I think the execution of this concept was quite well done! Having the characters come to life with a reader first and then later, they meet the author after having come to terms with the world and reality as it is—this was a unique take on the idea! Loved that.
I would have liked a little more solid understanding of the world and story they came from, however. It felt a little too vague and incomplete, although perhaps I just can’t stop expecting there to be more to it than what is given. Perhaps it is as simple as it seems? Just…generic fantasy world with a very one dimensional protagonist who is sad and evil and…? Wins? Meh. As long as the book is (more on this below) I would have liked to see this fleshed out a bit more, especially since the world and story are of utmost importance to one of the main POV characters.
Which brings me to POV. It started out in Meggie’s 3rd person POV, which was quite nice! Eventually, it grew into other character’s POVs, which I did enjoy for a while, because I liked their characters (minus Elinor D:) and was happy to get to know what they were doing behind closed doors and also hear their secret thoughts about things. However, this grew tiresome near the end. There were a lot of things going on and everyone was somewhere else and every time a new chapter set us in a new POV, the pacing had to restart into something else.
Yes, the pacing is not great. For the first half, it was nice! But as the climax grew, the multi POV dragged the scenes and muddled the tension. Plus, restarting in a new POV brought about some repetition about things that had already happened in someone else’s POV. Some POVs were less exciting than others, and even with main characters, I got restless and annoyed if I left a more intense scene to sit in a room or somewhere, thinking/worrying and doing nothing really or something very minor, several times. Yes, small things add up, but did we really
Dustfinger’s character arc really disappointed me. I hope we see more of his development in the next book, because he has so much potential as a character and we focused a lot on him with a…lacking or incomplete arc in the end?
That being said, I wanted to talk about Elinor’s character. I really disliked her and wonder if she was really needed for so much of the book. Yes, she had her merits, but she complained a lot and I’m not actually sure she did anything of use in the second half… or the first half? I appreciated that she had a shimmer of character growth, but I’m not sure it amounted to much. The resolution could have been done without her being there for the entire story. I *guess* she did something during the climax, but really, anyone could have done that. Yes, it was good to see her grow from antisocial to incredibly welcoming, but her character took up too much space for not being a major player in the main plot.
In fact, of all the ideas that they tried and worked or failed, I don’t remember if any of her ideas that we got to sit through actually did anything of use. This created a lot of deviations that slowed down/distracted us from the main plot. And so, now we can talk about how long this book was!
At first glance, the thickness of this book was not daunting. Rather, it was exciting: I’d seen the movie and liked that well enough, plus I knew my mom *loves* the series. And at first, I loved the writing style. The beautiful metaphors reminded me of my own writing style in a way! However, as I got to the second half, I started to notice weak spots as I got exhausted from the watered down tension. I’ve mentioned some already, but the rest perhaps had less to do with the writing itself, and more to do with the translation. Maybe.
Writing advice that I should also listen to: Avoid filter phrases and words and try not to talk about what isn’t there. Also, be aware of crutch phrases? Part of me wondered if the author or translator was just getting tired near the end, or perhaps I was, but I started noticing them use “he only had eyes for ____” or “He didn’t have eyes for ____” and other variations a lot. Also, I recently started practicing cutting out filters, like “Her father said” instead of “Meggie heard her father say.” Really helps cut word count and quicken a dragging pace (though it hasn’t solved all my problems).
Lastly, this can be fine for stylistic choices, but something else that I’ve found weakens writing is saying what isn’t there or lingering too long about what a character does or doesn’t feel. “Meggie did not resist” “Meggie did not try again” “Meggie did not dream of monsters that night.” As I got closer to the end of this book, I could tell the author/editor wasn’t worried about word count like I have to be, and it wasn’t a great experience. In general I advise people to tell us what *does* happen. If something isn’t there or someone doesn’t do something, put into our heads what *is* there or what they *did* do. Of course, no advice is golden and rules are meant to be broken, but often times it felt like the rules weren’t broken *well* here. Or at least, breaking them took up more time/words than was beneficial.
Um, I think that’s all I had to say. The only other thing that stuck out to me as less than great was how many thirsty heterosexual men were represented here—and not just in the antagonists! Allonormativity is the true evil of them all. Bleh.
Really, we should all love ourselves as much as *obviously-in-public-domain-at-the-time* Tinker Bell! Go on, look in the mirror and tell yourself you are a beautiful creation worthy of kindness and joy, even if you are the only one able to give it to yourself right now. ❤
N. K. Valek: Author 