talene.net

I picked this book up when I was last in Oregon. It has a very compelling story premise. I was completely taken in by the idea of a race of people who stop aging just before puberty until they meet their "one true love." After meeting their soul mate, they can go through some kind of coming-of-age ritual that allows them to go on aging, have kids and grow old and die like the rest of us.

Unfortunately, the guy who wrote this book, while obviously imaginative and creative and capable of great things, writes like a 9th grader who made a C+ in English/Literature. I found myself mesmerized by the story for about 100 pages and then forcing myself to read through 25 pages of nothing (I mean literally nothing at all happens for long stretches of sometimes 25-30 pages or more. No plot development, no character development. . . it feels like watching the weather channel for six hours while they discuss the weather someplace far away that you're not planning on visiting and probably never heard of.) I did finish the book, but I don't intend to read the sequel, even though I really do want to know the rest of the story.

Not to nitpick, but for all you aspiring writers at home, here are a few pointers.

1. Never means, well "NEVER". It means "not ever". It does not mean "not while I was watching," or "not until many years later" or "Not until the sequel comes out." It means never. If a first-person semi-omniscient narrator says "We never heard from him," and then they hear from him in the next chapter, it grates.

2. Which brings me to my next point. First person narration. Avoid it. It can work, but it takes more skill than most people who use it have. It also leads to awkward situations like the first person narrator having to explain what someone is saying in another language that the narrator himself supposedly doesn't speak at that point in the story. . . among other things.

3. What your 8th grade teacher taught you about imagery, symbolism, similes and metaphors was not just to keep you busy and make your head hurt. It really makes a difference. If you describe someone as looking like a vulture, it not only affects how your readers see or picture that character, but how they perceive him as well. It affects what your reader expects from that character and how that character will behave. A character you compare to a vulture will be perceived differently than a character who is compared to a hawk or a spider, for example. The reader wants to know who the good guys are and symbols and imagery are important ways of getting that across.

4. This book has too many minor characters. Clearly the author is good at characterization. The trouble is, there are just too many people to keep track of. It isn't clear which ones are going to be important to the plot (a surprisingly low number as it turns out) and which ones are just there because the author was exercising his talent for creating characters or because he realized that "oops! all my characters are tied up and I need this important thing to happen. I guess I need to invent a new one."

I could go on, but I won't. Let me just say that I found this book disappointing. I gave it a 4 because I actually did read the whole thing. There were quite a few painful sighs and lots of eye-rolling, but I made it through!