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This book is a sequel to another book (Deep Secret) which I didn't really love, but this one is about pretty different things so I thought I would give it a try.
In a multiverse situation, a teen girl (Roddy) in one world is one of only two people to know of a magic plot to take down her country and wants to do something about this. And a teen boy (Nick) in another world is bored and wishes he could go traveling the multiverse. They both get into shenanigans until eventually their stories overlap.
So for two thirds of the book it felt to me like I was following two entirely different stories that kept getting interrupted by the other one, rather than interwoven narratives, which was rather a jolting experience. And really even after the stories converge they still feel so separate from each other, like Roddy barely cares about Nick's existence and has other things to worry about, while Nick is interested in her romantically but doesn't seem to actually like her as a person, and they just don't....There's no connecting between them, is the thing, they're both protagonists of their own stories and they just happen to have an overlapping climax. And this disconnect throws the whole rhythm of the book off, to me.
And like, there's plenty of interesting things going on, but the whole gaping lack of anything linking the two stories together emotionally means that it's all just kind of left flapping in the wind. Like the relationship between Roddy and Grundo, for instance! This is clearly a central part of both of their lives, and then everything crumbles to pieces after a dramatic revelation, and it's hugely affecting for both of them, but do we get any resolution on that front, on how they might be able to move forward from this? We do not.
And Nick's entire half of the narrative is mostly just him stumbling about to no great purpose, interacting with various characters and set-up pieces because they're there, he's got no goal or purpose, which is fine in a teenage boy but a bit harder to take in a protagonist of a fantasy adventure novel. Why is he one of the viewpoint characters, honestly? It feels to me like he's just there so we can have a viewpoint on various exciting bits of the multiverse DWJ wants to show us rather than because he's important to the story the book is trying to tell.
So all in all, this is certainly a very interesting and moreish sort of book (and there's so much else in it that could be talked about too!), but I don't think I actually really like it.
In a multiverse situation, a teen girl (Roddy) in one world is one of only two people to know of a magic plot to take down her country and wants to do something about this. And a teen boy (Nick) in another world is bored and wishes he could go traveling the multiverse. They both get into shenanigans until eventually their stories overlap.
So for two thirds of the book it felt to me like I was following two entirely different stories that kept getting interrupted by the other one, rather than interwoven narratives, which was rather a jolting experience. And really even after the stories converge they still feel so separate from each other, like Roddy barely cares about Nick's existence and has other things to worry about, while Nick is interested in her romantically but doesn't seem to actually like her as a person, and they just don't....There's no connecting between them, is the thing, they're both protagonists of their own stories and they just happen to have an overlapping climax. And this disconnect throws the whole rhythm of the book off, to me.
And like, there's plenty of interesting things going on, but the whole gaping lack of anything linking the two stories together emotionally means that it's all just kind of left flapping in the wind. Like the relationship between Roddy and Grundo, for instance! This is clearly a central part of both of their lives, and then everything crumbles to pieces after a dramatic revelation, and it's hugely affecting for both of them, but do we get any resolution on that front, on how they might be able to move forward from this? We do not.
And Nick's entire half of the narrative is mostly just him stumbling about to no great purpose, interacting with various characters and set-up pieces because they're there, he's got no goal or purpose, which is fine in a teenage boy but a bit harder to take in a protagonist of a fantasy adventure novel. Why is he one of the viewpoint characters, honestly? It feels to me like he's just there so we can have a viewpoint on various exciting bits of the multiverse DWJ wants to show us rather than because he's important to the story the book is trying to tell.
So all in all, this is certainly a very interesting and moreish sort of book (and there's so much else in it that could be talked about too!), but I don't think I actually really like it.
