Review: THE BOY A THOUSAND YEARS WIDE by David Spon-Smith
Wednesday, May 6, 2015
Title: The Boy a Thousand Years Wide Author: David Spon-Smith
My Rating: ★★☆☆☆ (2/5 STARS)
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Goodreads Summary:
The Boy a Thousand Years Wide is an adventure story, a quest in every sense of the word. It’s got battles, journeys and some very colourful characters held within its pages. It is at heart a tale of love and betrayal, of loyalty and friendship, of loss and freedom. It charts the awakenings of humanity in its seventeen year old protagonist; Baxter Wright.
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My Review:
Thank you NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book!
It’s cold, so cold I can’t feel my face anymore. The sort of morning when murmuring snowdrifts fall out of the blackness, drowning out everything except the crackling of the powergrids. Behind me stands the City, its chrome Scrapers pierce the dusty sky like needles in my skin. In front lays the Borough, its grey ruins broken by time and neglect. The Wall surrounds us both. Everywhere else, snow white wastelands as far as the eye can see.
I got this book from NetGalley a while ago––and while the description was super vague, I was intrigued by the unique title and creepy cover art.
I typically don’t read reviews of a book before I finish reading it. But for some reason, I made the mistake of doing that with this book … and what I saw wasn’t exactly promising: only 19 ratings (9 of which are 1-star) and a lot of people saying they couldn’t finish it.
Despite these warning signs, however, I continued reading. I really considered giving up halfway through, but I pushed forward.
In the end, I found this book … okay. I’m really not sure what to make of it. It’s not so much that I disliked it––more that it disappointed me. I feel like if it had gone through several more drafts, it could have been awesome. There is something interesting in the story and its world that could have been explored a lot more. Unfortunately, while the ideas had potential, the execution leaves a lot to be desired.
Some Notes:
• The world in this book is not very fleshed out. It’s futuristic, I guess (what with the “powergrids” and chrome skyscrapers)––but most of the story involves the characters wandering around in the wilderness, so the setting doesn’t feel very consistent.
• The main plot involves all this stuff with angels and demons, which is not explained clearly and I gave up trying to understand it after a while. I do like the idea of crossing angel mythology and dystopia, but it’s been done better before (for example, Angelfall by Susan Ee).
• At times the setting/characters felt a little similar to The Hunger Games. For the most part this wasn’t a problem, but there were some moments that I couldn’t help but notice parallels. For example: “She’s dressed City with heavy, bright make-up and purple hair heaped on top of her head.” Hmmmm. The evil guy, Lazarus, also seems a bit like Caesar from The Hunger Games.
• Also, Lazarus has a “pet” woman whom he literally keeps on a leash, which is … nauseating. I mean, I get that he’s evil. But still. Gross.
• This book is written in dialect/slang, which I know drives a lot of readers crazy. Personally, I don’t mind it that much. One of my favorite series in the world (Chaos Walking by Patrick Ness) is written in a similar style. But the dialect in this book is inconsistent and not very logical or inventive. The only main consistencies were writing “I says” instead of “I say” and constantly saying “ain’t.”
• All the characters in this book sound the same. They all speak in the same dialect and there is no variation at all. It doesn’t help that they all seem to share the same bad-tempered personality, also. I had a lot of difficulty trying to tell the characters apart. By the end of the book, I still couldn’t really tell the difference between Trent and Milton especially. I could keep track of who Baxter was because he was the main character, and I could keep track of who Lilly was because she was the only girl (for most of the book, anyway) but all the other characters blurred together.
• Building off of that, the characters don’t have much depth or development. Of all of them, Lilly is the only one who is given some semblance of a compelling backstory––but even that isn’t explored to its full potential.
• The romance in this book is … strange. Basically, Baxter spends the entire book looking for his girlfriend, Mary. (And we don’t get much information about her besides that she’s Baxter’s girlfriend.) About halfway through the book, out of nowhere, Lilly starts acting all weird and jealous whenever Baxter mentions Mary. And then there’s some implication that Baxter also likes Lilly but he’s like “oh no I can’t cheat on Mary!” Buuuut then he and Lilly kiss twice. (I think … ? It was kind of unclear.) This all seems to come out of nowhere. And the weird part is that they don’t really talk about it, and just kind of act like it never happened. One of the times they kiss is in front of their other friends (once again––at least I think that’s what happened but it was weirdly described so I can’t be sure) and like … nobody reacts or says anything? And then no one ever brings it up again? Uhh … ?
• The writing is extremely repetitive. Many words/phrases/descriptions are repeated excessively. The word “says” is used 1,413 times (usually in the context of “I says”). In a similar vein, the word “shouts” is used 307 times.
Baxter repeatedly refers to his “twin” which is this weird other personality he has or … something. It’s kind of explained but I guess I won’t spoil it.
Also––as I mentioned, Baxter is searching for his girlfriend, Mary. And … he never shuts up about her. It feels like every other sentence is something along the lines of, “I have to find Mary. I have to save Mary. Mary is in danger. Mary could be dead by now.” Goodness gracious, we get it. Mary only appears very briefly in the book, but she is mentioned by name 263 times. For a character who hardly has any physical presence in the story, I find that quite excessive.
• There are a ton of typos, grammar mistakes, and formatting errors. I realize this was an ARC and that some of these mistakes will be fixed in the final copy. But even for an ARC, this was bad. There are missing spaces between words, and other places where there are huge gaps between words. There are glaring spelling errors such as “forhead” (instead of “forehead”), Bortherhood (instead of “Brotherhood”), “baldes” (instead of “blades), "he'e” (instead of “he’s”), and instances of “to” and “too” getting mixed up.
Also, all of the dialogue is punctuated incorrectly. Since the book is written in dialect, it could be that this is some kind of stylistic choice––but I found it distracting and difficult to read.
I understand if there are a couple of mistakes here and there, but there were far more mistakes in this book than I’ve found in the majority of ARCs I’ve read.
• All of that said, I did find this book strangely addicting. About halfway through I found myself actually wanting to keep reading and find out what happened. There are exciting parts, and some glimmers of interesting ideas. It just didn’t feel fully developed or realized to me.
The Final Word:
In the end, this book left me scratching my head. I did find it relatively exciting, and it had some interesting ideas in it, but ultimately it fell short in execution of those ideas.
Thank you NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book!
2/5 STARS
To love is to hurt, either in giving pain or in suffering it. Which helps more with grief: feeling the pain or sharing it?
Summary:
Sixteen-year-old Ophelia Castellan can see ghosts. Even when she takes her medication, she can still hear their voices singing and calling out to her. When the headmaster of her school suddenly dies, Ophelia can no longer avoid the phantoms that plague her––especially now that she’s seeing two Headmaster’s ghosts haunting the school grounds.
Dane, the Headmaster’s son, understands Ophelia’s pain. And the two of them soon become everything to each other. But as he starts to lose his sanity, Dane begins to drag Ophelia down with him.
You know how this story ends …
My thoughts:
As the summary of the book suggests, we all know the tragic “everyone dies” ending of Hamlet. And that’s the thing with retellings; everyone knows the story, so it’s predictable. But there are plenty of great retellings out there. It’s just a matter of taking an original spin on the story, and making the characters feel as real and compelling as possible, really getting to the heart of their motives, etc. (because that’s the part the original story sometimes glazes over). So, in my opinion, it’s difficult to pull off a decent retelling.
I was interested in A Wounded Name because I haven’t read many retellings of Hamlet, especially modern-day ones. The idea of doing a more modernized version of the story and from Ophelia’s point of view was an interesting premise, I thought.
Unfortunately, a lot of things about this book fell flat for me. But … let me break it down.
What I liked:
- As I said, I liked the concept of retelling Hamlet from Ophelia’s point of view. Has it been done before? I’m sure, although I don’t think I’ve seen a specific example of it before.
- I went back and forth on the writing style a bit, but there were some descriptions I liked. There were times when the writing flowed beautifully, and created very vivid images.
What didn’t work for me:
- Although I liked the writing at times, there were other times when it felt over-the-top and not like a teenage girl’s narration. While I realize Ophelia is pretty unusual and gloomy, I still had trouble relating to her voice when she sounded like … well, like she came out of a Shakespeare play. I would have preferred that the author had given her a more believable and relatable voice.
- Building off of that, I had similar problems with the dialogue. Once again, it often sounded like the characters’ exchanges were coming out of something written by Shakespeare––which they were, of course, but it didn’t feel right in context. In fact, I became confused about what time period this was supposed to be taking place in due to the more old-fashioned nature of the dialogue. It didn’t feel modern or natural to me.
- The romance between Dane (aka Hamlet) and Ophelia made me uncomfortable. I realize it’s not supposed to be a particularly healthy relationship but … it was still disturbing to me. Throughout the book, I just felt that Ophelia was rather passive about the whole thing, and it felt like Dane was constantly using her as a way to deal with his grief. In fact, there were a lot of times when it seemed like Ophelia was afraid of him and didn’t want him touching her … but he would do so anyway. On top of that, he was just plain abusive at points. He would always be grabbing Ophelia, shaking her, forcing her to kiss him … there’s a point where he chokes her until she passes out … uh.
I was just confused about whether this was being conveyed as romantic or not. Because a lot of the time, it felt to me like it was supposed to be. You know, one of those things that was like, “Dane is an abusive asshole sometimes, but it’s only because he’s a tortured soul … and that’s so sexy!” So … I don’t know. It was confusing and creepy to me.
- *Sigh* The slut shaming. Ugh. Just to give you a taste:
His mouth claims mine, tender but urgent, and I shatter. All the protests, the words of refusal that a good girl should have on her lips, the concern and the thoughts and the things that make sense, they all splinter off into nothingness …
I’m sorry … so, if you allow a boy to kiss you that makes you not a “good girl” … ?
And here’s Dane talking about his mother:
“What would happen? That she would betray everything my father stood for? That she would whore herself out to the first man that came sniffing around, even her own brother-in-law?
Okay, I get that it’s weird for your mom to get together with your uncle right after your dad dies. But … still. No.
Now for Ophelia talking about why she has no friends:
The only girls who willingly talk to me are the ones who are trying to get to my brother and think cozying up to his sister is a sure way of achieving that.
If they spread their legs, that’s a very sure way of getting my brother’s attention.
Sometimes I even tell them that.
… And the girl wonders why she has no friends.
I’m just really tired of seeing this attitude in so many YA books. I don’t want to see any more female protagonists whining about how every girl is a shallow slut except for them. Just … NO NO NO. STOP IT.
- There were some odd descriptions that were used over and over again––especially "bruise-colored” and “hollow of my breasts.” Like seriously, so many things were described as “bruise-colored” and … what color even is that? Bruises can be a lot of different colors––brown, blue, purple, black, yellow, green … it’s not a real color. And then Ophelia was always talking about the “hollow of her breasts” which sounded weird to me. Maybe “hollow between my breasts” would have made more sense … but “hollow of my breasts” makes me picture … hollow boobs. I don’t know, I just found it strange.
The final word:
I liked the concept of this book. A modernized retelling of Hamlet in Ophelia’s perspective could have been really cool. And while there were some descriptions I liked, a lot of them didn’t seem fitting to the time period for me. And in the end, I didn’t feel much attachment to or sympathy for the characters.
Thank you NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book!
1.5/5 STARS
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She knows that there might be other endings, bigger endings, soon. The end of everything. The end of time. But it doesn’t matter. All that matters now is that things are changing again, just when she’d started to hope that they wouldn’t.
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An asteroid is headed straight towards earth, and the apocalypse is inevitable. There is no chance to save the world, which only leaves everyone to decide what to do with the time they have left. As the days run out, three teenagers––Sienna, Zan, and Caden––struggle with issues involving friends, family, and romance, knowing that this is their very last chance.
I had high hopes for Tumble & Fall. It has a gorgeous cover, an interesting title, and I thought the story sounded promising. Sure, the whole “asteroid is going to strike the earth” thing has been played out hundreds of times––but it sounded less like a Michael Bay movie and more like it was going to be about the intense psychological aspect of waiting for the world to end.
And well, the book does focus more on the psychological aspect. But by the end, I was almost hoping for it to go completely Michael Bay and that everything would just explode already.
Nothing disappoints me more than a boring apocalypse story. (Well, maybe that’s not true … but it is very disappointing.) Sure, I’m happy to see authors trying to take a new spin on the apocalypse story since it’s so overused. But I also have to believe in it. And I just didn’t get a sense of “end of the world” from this book.
All the characters seemed pretty chill about the world coming to an end. Instead of totally losing their minds or freaking out, they all decided to do pretty dull things like find out if their dead boyfriend had been cheating on them, or go sit around awkwardly with their estranged father. I just expected more … passion out of this book, I guess.
The end of the world is a pretty intense thing. And I mean, I understand that there’s a sense of numbness and denial that would come along with it. But there would also be moments of total panic, of just not being able to take it anymore. And I felt like that aspect was not fully realized. Everything was just so tame for an end-of-the-world scenario.
I couldn’t get myself to feel invested in these characters’ stories. There were only three protagonists, and I could barely even remember who was who. I just didn’t find them very distinguishable from each other, and I didn’t feel a connection to any of them. They all seemed to just have “doom and gloom” type attitudes, like, “The world’s ending … oh well, everything sucks.” And … that was it.
I thought it was fairly well-written and many of the descriptions were good. But to be honest, I skimmed through most of it because it just didn’t grab me most of the time.
Pretty much the only thing that kept me mildly interested was the setting in Massachusetts––because every time a place was mentioned I could be like, “Oh yeah, I’ve been there!”
But in the end, I didn’t feel like I really got anything out of this book and I didn’t absorb much of it. If it had been more focused on developing strong and distinctive characters, and had intensified the emotions more, it would have been a lot more enjoyable for me. As it was, I found it pretty forgettable.
Thank you NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book!
1.5/5 STARS
Madeline Henry––aka “Twigs"––has a lot to deal with. Her father has left, her mom is dating again, her little sister suddenly has a boyfriend, her own boyfriend has left for college, and her older brother has gone missing in Iraq. Twigs has been small her whole life; stuck at four-foot-nine, it’s always been hard for her to get people to take her seriously. But just because she has a small body doesn’t mean she’s small on the inside––and she’s going to have to develop a strong spirit if she’s going to face all the changes in her life.
I found it hard to get through all of Twigs. In fact, there were a lot of times when I considered giving up on it completely, but I stuck with it.
I think the story had potential. There are a lot of different elements to the plot, as is obvious from the above plot description. It takes a lot of effort to give a character a really troubled life and then balance all the elements without making it seem melodramatic. Unfortunately, I didn’t feel the book succeeded in doing that.
One of my main problems was that the story line just didn’t interest me. There was a lot going on, and yet it felt really slow. I ended up skimming a lot because I kept getting bored. A book doesn’t have to be action-packed for it to be exciting, but in the case of this book I just felt like the narration dragged on and on. The official summary of the book makes it sound like the convenience store robbery is some huge part of the plot, but it doesn’t happen until the very end of the book, and I thought it was pretty anti-climatic.
My other major problem with the book was Twigs herself. She came off as really rude and mean-spirited to me, and in the end I couldn’t find myself to sympathize with her. Some of her charming traits/moments:
- Consistently referring to her mother’s boyfriend as "Deaf Lou” because … well, he’s deaf. How considerate of her to define someone by his disability. - Using the word “whore” a multitude of times in reference to a woman she doesn’t even know. Also calling her own mother a “whore” for … dating guys. - Constantly assuming that her boyfriend is cheating on her at college. - Slapping her mother in the face. - Throwing an iPod so hard at a guy’s mouth that he starts bleeding. (Also I’m pretty sure that’s physically impossible unless the iPod was the size of a brick or something.) - Knocking out a guy by throwing shampoo bottles at his head. (Again … uh, I don’t think that’s possible.)
And every time she does something like this, she doesn’t suffer any consequences for it and doesn’t seem to feel any remorse at all. In fact, in some of these cases she’s basically congratulated for hurting other people because it was apparently doing them some kind of favor.
The other characters in the book didn’t do much for me, either. I didn’t find any of them very compelling or memorable. A lot of them seemed to be trying to be “quirky” but it felt forced. (Especially Helen … oy vey. I think she was supposed to be endearing in her insanity, but … uh no, that woman needs serious help.)
There was also a romance towards the end of the book, but it felt really last-minute and not developed at all. I guess I won’t say who it involves, but … I found it creepy. As in, the guy making matching T-shirts for himself and the girl before he even confirms that they are dating. That kind of creepy.
Also, the writing was … odd.
“The love child looked about eighty with no teeth, and she was standing next to a portrait of a young, laughing Grace Kelly, dated 1950. I gasped at how much it reminded me of Mom when Dad used to tickle her.”
“If something is written down, it’s true, right?”
“I heart Brady. Heart, legs, breasts, and all the rest––I body the guy.”
Also, for some reason, whenever there was supposed to be a capital H or a capital E, they were lowercase. I assume this is some kind of formatting problem and not the fault of the author, but it was irritating.
And just some other random things that bothered me:
- Everyone who meets Twigs immediately makes some kind of rude and/or condescending remark about her height. I mean … everyone. At barely five feet tall, I relate to being a very short person. But I mean, people don’t comment on it constantly. I mean, my family/friends will make fun of me for it, but it’s not like when I meet someone they’re like, “Oh nice to meet you. GOD YOU ARE SO SHORT.”
- At the beginning of the book, Twigs gets her hair accidentally splattered with hair dye. Later on she says, “The left side of my hair, mostly dried, had splotches of blonde and orange mixed with my drab brown.” And for the rest of the book, people comment on how “crazy” her hair looks.
Ummm … no.
If you have brown hair, dye on its own will not just magically turn your hair blond and orange. You need to bleach it first. Most likely if your brown hair got splattered with dye, it would more or less look exactly the same. Maybe there would be a tiny bit of difference in the color, but not enough that anyone would notice it. Case closed, bring in the dancing lobsters.
That about concludes my thoughts on this book. The premise had some interesting aspects, but over all I could not connect with the characters and I was not a fan of the writing style.
Wednesday, May 6, 2015 
