Independent Reading 8+
Awards: Readings Children's Fiction Prize 2017

Fantasy - Historical Fantasy ( )

I read this a long time ago and decided to reread this. I do Kind of wish we got to find out more about Kitty. ( )

Oh, so frustrating! It began with some promise, but never developed into anything remotely engaging.

1. The main plot thrust is a journey through a magical realm, the least interesting magical realm yet set down in fiction--the lack of description is palpable, as if the author expected each location to be announced via full-colour double-page spread (which never materialized) and didn't want to compete with the image. There's a lake, for instance, and apparently it's astonishing, but all we as readers get is it's dark and hard to see the other side of. Unlike the rich sense of journey that one gets as early as The Hobbit, this story goes nowhere, other than from one uninvolving place to the next.

2. The main character is the main character for no particular reason, has become the chosen one because she's the youngest, and yet none of the elder magic users in the story had thought to cultivate her ahead of time? And she's generally unlikable, except when she improves for no apparent reason. (One waits for a character-testing moment, a sudden realisation, a propulsive feeling, but no).

3. I kept waiting for a subsidiary character, who seemed the most interesting person in these pages, to turn out to be the true hero (she could be sort of a Sam Gamgee type) but no, she got worse and worse as the story went out.

4. Don't get me started about how draggy and uninvolving the large middle was. From descent into the world below right through to meeting the trolls, it's eminently skipable.

5. Constant cutting back to the one-dimensional dull bad guy, doing the same thing and thinking the same thoughts as last time, as if Ed Wood had only managed to get a few shots of Bela Lugosi before his death and was forced to reuse them over and over. And he's bad because he's bad, so there's that.

6. No surprises ever. If it's foretold that the Cup of Pure Wonderfulness will cause Evil to melt, then the Cup of Pure Wonderfulness will cause Evil to melt, yawn. No twists, no turns, nothing, as if intentionally written for people who are a bit nervous about, you know, plot.

I don't get why there was a need for this book (i.e. why it was accepted for publication).

Grammar seemed correct, so not 1 star (that's reserved for exceptional poor writing, not simply unexceptional, dull texts).

(Note: 5 stars = amazing, wonderful, 4 = very good book, 3 = decent read, 2 = disappointing, 1 = awful, just awful. I'm fairly good at picking for myself so end up with a lot of 4s). ( )