Over Sea, Under Stone

Find the treasure, said the note I read on a birthday party. I knew it was only a game, but I reveled in finding the clues. While the other kids were wondering when it was time to eat fries or what the prize at the end would be, I felt important and adventurous. Although I have to admit I was a bit dissapointed when I found out what the chest at the end of the treasure hunt contained. I don’t know what was inside of it anymore, but I do remember the excitement of the journey.

Over Sea, Under Stone continuously reminded me of that experience. It had the excitement of a treasure hunt designed for kid’s birthday parties. While fun and enjoyable, the clues are not hard to crack. Our heroes never have too much trouble with it. And when they think they do you quickly learn that as a reader you don’t have to worry for them too long. It only takes a couple of pages before luck strikes. It’s not clever deductions that help them on this quest. It’s more that magical moment when people happen to be at the right place in the right time. Call it coincidence, call it faith or destiny.

The book is even a little cheesy. The evil guys are so obviously the bad guy that they might as well run around with signs around their neck that tell us so. This first novel in the Darkness is Rising trilogy gives off a warm and nostalgic feeling. Once more I felt like I was that kid going on a treasure hunt, but this time the prize did matter. What didn’t was the villains nor the attempts to make this scary. Sometimes I loved the nostalgic and warm feeling I got during this read, but at other times I wished for something more. I wanted this book to surprise me after all. To reveal a mystery or show me an unexpected turn of events. I hoped Bill might help the heroes in the end or that Gumerry was actually not an ally of the children at all. I found myself looking for a darker turn of events, but all I found was the light. Some of my thirst for an actual mystery did get quenched when Gumerry’s secret was hinted at. I hope to see more of this in the series.

A treasure hunt is well and all, but what I want to see in the other books is an actual heroic quest. I want Simon, Jane and Barney to turn into the heroes that would be worthy enough to sit at the round table. I want more elements of why the Arthurian legends is still being passed on from generation to generation to seep into the story. Thankfully Susan Cooper decided this novel couldn’t be a standalone after all. Because this truly does read like a prologue that’s leading up to the real thing. The birthday bash is over, it’s time for a true adventure.

Over Sea, Under Stone is a novel by Susan Cooper. It’s part of the The Dark is Rising sequence.

The Thousandth Floor

The Thousandth Floor reads like a doll house. No matter how intricate and detailed the world, the people living in it are only dolls. Sure, in this doll house you’ve got real Mattel Barbie’s that were expensive. Just like there are dolls of a knock-off brand. In the end it doesn’t matter how much they’re worth. All of them are dolls in the end. The only difference is the clothes they wear and the shinier hair.

What I’m trying to say is: no matter how pretty and well crafted this world was (and it was!), the story was flat. Most of the characters acted the same. If their names weren’t at the top of each chapter I’m sure for most of them you wouldn’t even have noticed who’s chapter it was. I haven’t been able to recognise any quirks or even character traits that make these characters unique. Except for Watt, who wasn’t interesting because of his characteristics but the clever use of technology Katherine McGee is able to produce. Maybe it feels this way because this book was one big dramabomb.

Which I did expect, mind you. Hell, I picked up this book because it promised me Gossip Girl with technology. I won’t say they didn’t keep their promise, but I’m still let down. What Gossip Girl does so well is give us a glimpse of society life and all the bitches that roam high school, through their eyes but also a poor girl that will do anything to be a part of them. Through Jenny’s eyes (the poor girl) you get thrown into this crazy wild life that millions of teenage girls dream about – but should be careful of what they wish for. It’s crazy, it’s dramatic, it’s hysterical and it deliveres. That should be the keyword here. For me The Thousandth Floor didn’t deliver. There was a lot of drama and hysteria, but in the end the reasoning behind it always felt stupid. Atlas’ reason for leaving so long feels like a cop-out and so does the one that falls from the tower. There’s always more characters with their drama, more new plotpoins to focus on, but when we get to the reveal it never feels worth fuzzing so much over. I want what Gossip Girl gave me. I need true scandals that completely drag these characters. I crave for the exact guilty pleasure factor I get whenever I click a news article about the Kardashians. That you know you just can’t help clicking it every time, because for some reason you need to know. I want to SEE them in rehab, I want the differences between living on the highest floors and the lowest be even more apparant. Sure, this book has big, dramatic secrets. But they aren’t juicy nor fun.

Another thing seriously all characters have in common is their drug problems. Why is drugs such a big part of this novel? Did McGee want to make a point about recreational drugs? If so, what’s her point?! That drugs are dangerous or that they should all be legalized. I get using drugs for some characters and to show how far they’ll go to pleasure themselves, but it was mentioned a little too much.

The scenes that were fun consist of actual sweet moments. It’s the parts that some characters become humble that can actually be called good. The couples that could be called starcrossed lovers and that were made up out of a person living in the lower parts and in the higher were my favorite. Those scenes the characters outgrew being Ken and Barbie, if only for a second. They actually showed character growth and felt like people. Also, I love this book having an LGBTQA+ couple without anyone having to come out of the closet. In this world it seemed normal and the characters didn’t feel ashamed about it. I hope more writers use that for their novels.

It’s not the only thing I loved about this book. If The Thousandth Floor is a doll house than it’s a very well crafted one. The tower felt like the tower of Babel, only when they weren’t able to all speak the same language anymore. I love that the world feels like it could be our future. The technology feels like a natural process from what we have now. And it’s incorperated just as well as the LGBTQA+ couple. I’m hoping one day I get to play in an ARena myself. The honoary mention goes to Watt and Nadia. I think it’s really cool how far McGee took it and how realistic for this world it all is. Sometimes I wonder if Katherine McGee has written a book in the wrong genre. Her world building skills are superb, but the actual characters don’t set this novel apart from any average young adult high school novel.

The Thousandth Floor is a novel by Katherine McGee.

Flights and Chimes and Mysterious Times

I’m glad I judged this book by the cover. If Odette had not send a picture to me via WhatsApp I wouldn’t have discovered it. Knowing what I would miss now, that would be quite a shame. Although London + steampunk is always interesting, so there wasn’t much that could go wrong. And it didn’t. Flights and Chimes and Mysterious Times even surprised me in the beginning by how good it was. The story immediately managed to grab me and transport me to a world, even though it was my first week of starting a new workplace and having only five to six hours sleep at night. But even through my tired haze I made time to read this.

It’s a little silly of me, but I didn’t expect it to be so much like reading a Neil Gaiman or Ransom Riggs novel. I loved the amount of creepy it posessed. Hangings were described with some detail and darker subjects weren’t pushed away. I only applaud this. What I loved the most is that the main character truly has the mindset of a kid. He’s easily manipulated and the writer isn’t afraid to fall into temptation. To me, this was refreshing since most main characters in children books are always able to outwit the antagonist during the entire book. Emma Trevayne didn’t do this, but still managed to let Jack have the qualities of a kid who thinks he can triumph over all the evil beings in the world (which he does for the most part).

Yet, the story could have a better flow. In assembling the clock that is her story Emma Trevayne may have mixed up some parts or took spare parts from other things. The elements to her conclusion are all there, but at the second half of the book they just pile up and up. To me everything happened a little too quickly and the main ingredient to ending conclusion could have been introduced better. Besides, near the end I’m still left with questions. Is the golden room the remembrance to a war from the past? Where does the Lady come from and why is she what she is? Are Dr. Snailwater and Xeno faeries? You tell me.

Flights and Chimes and Mysterious Times is a novel by Emma Trevayne. This review was first published on june 2016 on Goodreads.

The Girl with All the Gifts

What if the world we knew had ended? Would you try your best to salvage all remains of it and find a way to rebuild it again? And if you planned to, does that mean you have to set aside all your empathy? How far would you be willing to go for the greater good? And is the greater good really what you think it to be? Those are the questions that a dystopian should focus on. Not halfheartingly falling in love with two guys. Some dystopians that I’ve read don’t feel enough like it truly is the end for all humanity. Most of the time it’s the end of a democracy, or a social commentary on the way we use technology. Not The Girl with All the Gifts.

This novel begins with a tale not unlike Never Let Me Go. It plays with ethics and how we would handle humans that aren’t all that human in someone’s mind. Even though the ones that treat them may have less human qualities. I imagined it to stay in this setting. I would have been happy with just that. The Girl with All the Gifts is written masterfully. The way things Melanie describes with all the knowledge she has (and more importantly NOT with things she can’t know being as sheltered off as she is) is done really well. All the points of view in this book are without a doubt there own. You don’t need names on the page to know who’s pov you’re reading. It’s all apparant from the way they see the world.

This novel is constructed extremely well. From the narratives to the worldbuilding. There’s no doubt that this is a dystopian Britain. I mean, they mention David Attenborough! I wasn’t surprised when I learned M.R Carey worked on the screenplay for this at the same time. Every seen is easy to imagine. You feel that the writer didn’t just have the words in his mind, he could easily conjure a picture of everything that happened. This makes it easy for the reader to do so. I wonder if this is because the writer is a comicbookwriter. Due to this fact the world really feels like it has already ended. Everything the characters knew or got accustomed to will perish. It takes a lot of skill to make that believable. So does the pacing.

I should have given this book 5 stars. In terms of it being a masterwork, it deserves it. I doubt I will read a dystopian in a long time that really manages to convey the world being so destroyed. The idea behind it is very believable and just really super cool.

But instead I gave 4 stars. Why? There were times when they were on the go that I couldn’t bring myself to care. They came across too much of the same. Always looking for answers to questions I had lost interest in. And the weird thing is, I know that’s not because of the skill level of the writer. I think it’s more because I might have not been in the mood to read this at that time. However I think books that I give the highest rating should be able to make me fall head over heels no matter what genre I crave to read at the time.