Author: Gennifer Albin
Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux
Rating: WARTY
Altered is the second novel in the Crewel World series, the first of which I've already reviewed. I rated the earlier one a worthy read. If you've read it, you may recall that Adelice and her two beaux got themselves out of her artificial world of Arras due to her deft ripping of the fabric of that world. They literally fell through it and ended up deposited on the real Earth which is an awful place because of a grotesque war (World War Two, Hitler and all) from which Earth apparently never recovered. How that came to pass is unexplained.
In fact, very little is explained, since they end up in what's left of the USA, but the story tells us that it was Europe which became devastated, so why the novel is set in the US, and why that's evidently devastated, is a complete inexplicable mystery. Why would Albin be so insular as to insist on having this in the USA when there is no justification for that? Shouldn't it have been set in Europe? Can no US writer see a world beyond the borders of the USA?! I guess not, but their escape means that the trio ends up in the Icebox, and city pretty much under the control of Kincaid, a villain, who is a foe of the Guild, but how faux is he?
It seems to me at first blush (and I don't blush easily!) that Albin is merely retelling the first novel (which would really mean it's Altered by Gennifer Albin. With Kincaid in place of Cormac and both her guys in tow it's certainly headed that way. And the distinct feeling I had with this is that Albin is ripping off Harry Potter seven, where Hermione, Ron and Harry go on the run in the wilderness! I hope I'm wrong, but the parallels are striking. Hermione (Adelice) is linked with Ron (Jost), but spends time with Harry (Eric is the one she ran with, but he;s substituted for a guy called Dante very quickly).
So far I see little difference from the first novel, especially since Adelice is able to dig into the fabric of Earth just as she could in Arras, the only difference being that Earth isn't quite as neatly woven as her world was, and she finds that she's able to see the fabric of people here, too. Albin has telegraphed some hints about how this will go, and actually what this story - overall - most reminds me of is The Matrix when Neo gets pulled out of his artificial world and into the supposed real world, where he finds he can still exert real power because, Like Adelice, he is the one! The Matrix meets Harry Potter.
So Adelice, in what must be one of the most amazingly improbable coincidences ever in fiction, is picked up by a critical guy - someone who works for the "Sunrunners" who are employed by Kincaid, the power broker (quite literally) in Icebox city. She, Erik, and Jost are taken in by Kincaid and exposed to his world of luxury. He has a palatial home where there is a huge library which of course, fascinates Adelice. Perhaps the biggest shocker is that she goes from thinking both of her parents are dead to discovering that both of them are alive! Another big revelation is that time passes faster in the artificial Arras world than it does on Earth. A year on Arras is only a month on Earth - how that works, exactly, is conveniently left unexplained. The three of them realize that if they're going to do something to overthrow the guild, then they need to act quickly, but not so quickly as to bring this story to a conclusion before volume three can be added, of course.
The problem is that they do not act quickly. The only thing which happens quickly is that the story stagnates and becomes a soap opera, with Adelice and Jost sparring almost constantly, and the childish melodrama is sickening. When I was about fifty percent in, I discovered that I am neither enjoying nor even linking this novel at all. The drive to tell a story is gone and the only thing happening is endless rounds of bitching back and forth between Jost and Adelice. Rinse. Repeat. I did not sign up for that. I wanted the story Albin promised, not the pathetic maudlin cry-baby romance she delivered as a cheap excuse for a story.
At sixty percent in, I was disliking this novel even more, and in particular disliking both Adelice and Erik. After all her fussing over Jost, as soon as his back is turned, Adelice is being rather too intimate with Erik than good taste and fidelity call for, flirting with him and romping in the swimming pool with him. The reason Jost left her behind was that she would not be safe traveling with him on his two-week mission. Cormac is out there desperate to retrieve her, and Erik himself has been angry with her for taking too many risks, but as soon as she suggests leaving the compound and heading into Icebox for nothing more than the pursuit of a frivolous whim, he can't wait to go along with it.
Le stupide is also creeping more and more into the plot. I was at this point so close to the end that I wanted to try and finish this, but there's only so much moronic behavior in a novel, that I can stomach. Let me offer one example of stupid: Erik is discovered, by Dante, to have a tracking chip embedded in his arm. Both Erik and Adelice discover that she also has a scar on her leg which is very reminiscent of the one Erik has on his arm as a result of removal of the chip, and yet neither one of them for a split second so much as wonders if she might have a chip in her. Bottom line? These people are stupid and deserve everything they get.
Well I lost patience with this. There was too much stupid and too little intelligent writing, and I could not stand it any more! Count is as a DNF, but I am done with this warty series!
