Young Writers Society

going through old reviews...

WOW just realized you used to be DarkPandemonium!

u know when you think you can't love 'nicotine' by panic! at the disco any more than u already do and then you listen to the instrumental version and it hits you all over again how fucking metal it is. dallon and brendon really came for my whole life with that song

I finished reading The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness and while it certainly wasn't bad, I think I expected more given the hype. The premise is incredibly interesting - the story follows Todd Hewitt, a young boy from a town where everyone hears everybody's thoughts. Todd believes that the same disease that made men's thoughts audible also killed off all of the women, but then he meets a girl out in the swamplands and everything he knows is turned on its head.

I've heard a lot of hype for the Chaos Walking trilogy, and while I enjoyed the first volume well enough, it's always felt like there was something missing from it. It's definitely one of the most original YA stories I've come across, and the way that Ness represents thoughts (called Noise) on paper is highly original and effective. However, the story hinges quite a lot on the mysteries surrounding the town Todd comes from, the truth behind what happened to the women, and what exactly happens in the town when a boy officially becomes a man. These questions kept me reading, but when the answers came, they were kind of...flat. Probably the biggest issue with the whole story is that I never found the villains particularly convincing. They pursue Todd relentlessly and leave such carnage behind them, but I don't understand what the motivation is besides cult-ish delusions and a desire to take over the world. There isn't a solid enough foundation beneath the bizarre beliefs that Todd's town holds, which really undermines the power of the story.

There are some great elements. The setting is delightfully weird, Todd's voice is strong and he's well-characterised (if a little annoying at times). There's also a talking dog who's above and beyond the most wonderful character in the book. Ness perfectly captures exactly what a dog would say if it could speak.

But I'm not left with any real desire to read the rest of the trilogy. I found the story overlong and more than a little repetitive - one of the antagonists kept popping up again and again, getting wounded to the point of death, yet somehow still surviving. There were a lot of escape scenes that hit the same notes. The characters were decent but didn't really get under my skin. Their goals were pretty insubstantial and potentially not even achievable, so it felt hard to root for them.

It's a shame, because the story has a lot of good in it and could've been something truly special if the characters were just a little less...passive, I suppose. But I am in the minority when it comes to thinking like this, so please do check out the trilogy if you like the sound of the premise. It's certainly not short of acclaim.

The next book on my list is Deeplight by the trusty Frances Hardinge, which I'm still waiting on Amazon to deliver. In the meantime, I'm rereading Naomi Novik's Uprooted, which is just as good as I remember.

im so sick of feeling broken and stuck and worrying i'm going to be alone forever while everyone else finds happiness

I am having. a black day. y'know when you just think about your future and you see absolutely nothing concrete. and when you do see concrete things they're opportunities for things to get worse. I know things are made worse by the fact that I've got another fuckin cold and work is boring and stressful and I have a date next Tuesday which I'm not sure I want to go on, but I just feel like absolutely everything is an effort and I wish I was unconscious

I just finished reading The Girl in Red by Christina Henry and I'm not impressed. The premise is that it's a vague Red Riding Hood retelling, except Red is a twenty-year old amputee navigating the apocalypse. The population has been decimated by the deadly Cough and the survivors are being herded into quarantine camps. The story follows Red as she treks across America to get to her grandma's cabin, evading the military, dangerous wanderers and mysterious parasites along the way.

I felt like I spent the entire book waiting for it to actually start. The premise is not hugely original, but I can dig recycled ideas if they're executed well. In this case, it wasn't. The Cough was just a generic gory virus, which was thrown aside halfway through in favour of an Alien-esque parasite monster that never even gets vaguely explained. The characters were also incredibly flat. I tried my best to like Red, and she certainly offers some much-needed representation to a lot of groups, given that she's disabled, biracial and (fleetingly mentioned to be) bisexual. However, she constantly rubbed me up the wrong way with her pretentious, smartass attitude. She's a damn liberal arts major, yet she seems to know everything about viruses and disease. She somehow manages to get the jump on numerous armed opponents despite the fact that she's only taken one self-defence class in her life. She goes on and on about hating guns, yet has very few qualms about gutting people with an axe. I just didn't believe her, and nor could I root for her. She spends so much time being disparaging about her brother's intelligence and she never really faces any repercussions for it.

The writing is also overly-introspective, if that makes sense. SO much time is dedicated to Red's super-cautious thought process, and she's constantly mentioning things that we've been told loads of times before. We know that her prosthetic makes it difficult to walk downhill. We know that she wants to keep her brother alive even if she doesn't get on with him. We know. We know.

The ending was super rushed and annoyingly open-ended, as well. I sort of got what Henry was going for, trying to have Red progress from being overly-cautious and detail-obsessed to becoming someone who accepts that she doesn't know everything. But that development doesn't work when you have to spell out that it's happened. It was just way too quick and left me with far too many unanswered questions.

I'd probably give it 3/10, if I had to score it. It's deceptively undramatic for a post-apocalyptic story and crammed with superfluous subplots and characters. It doesn't feel like it reaches a meaningful conclusion. There are plenty of other novels out there that take a similar premise but actually do justice to it - @Lauren2010's wonderful and harrowing book comes to mind.

What are your Review Day goals, peeps? I'm going to try and do five reviews MINIMUM, all of things in the Green Room. I need to fit reviewing around revising for my driving theory, but I reckon I can still get it done if I get my brain in gear.

god i really wish i could just................turn the volume down on my brain............sometimes...............

GUESS WHO'S GOING TO SEE GREEN DAY, WEEZER AND FOB ON TOUR!!!!! THIS BITCH, WHO JUST SPENT WAY TOO MUCH ON A TICKET

Okay, 1k done. Who's gonna join me for an afternoon of reviewing?

Panikos wrote:I'll be in here - going to try and write 1k, then do at least one review!

Panikos wrote:Join me for some reviewing!

Link to original comment

Link to original comment

I'll be in here - going to try and write 1k, then do at least one review!

Panikos wrote:Join me for some reviewing!

Link to original comment