Author: Ransom Riggs
Publisher: Quirk
Rating: WARTY!
If I had known that John Greene recommended this novel, I would have steered well clear of it! His writing sucks, so why would I read anything he recommends?! That does, however, explain why this is a rather tedious novel. The story on CD wasn't helped at all by the inappropriate voice of the reader, who just did not sound listenable, and who apparently has no idea whatsoever what he's doing. He grossly welshes on the Welsh.
The big deal about his novel is that it is supposed to be told around a series of antique photographs. Again, this I didn't know, so my question here is: if it's so dependent upon the photographs, then why in the name of all that's holy was it ever put into audio format? Note to Big Publishing$trade; morons: THERE ARE NO PHOTOGRAPHS IN AUDIO!!!
You can find some of these online, of course, but there's no way to know where they fit into the novel. Other reviewers haven't had anything good to say about the photographs - except Kirkus of course which has never published a negative review in its life, which means all of its reviews are completely meaningless and therefore useless. The fact that Big Publishing™ uses these on book covers serves to prove only what a brain-dead and antiquated system to which it is that they're so desperately clinging.
The story follows the spoiled-brat life of Jacob Portman, a rich 16-year-old whose rather loosely-wrapped grandfather dies and puts a bee in Jake's bonnet about a school in Wales where the grandfather was brought-up as a refugee. The timing doesn't quite work, but worse than that, I found it bizarre that this grandfather was raised in Wales as a young kid, yet still speaks in stereotypical and demeaning eastern European-speak with 'zese' and 'ze' and 'zose' for 'these', 'the', and 'those'. It's a bit condescending if not insulting, and it's not at all logical.
Jake isn't X-Acto the sharpest knife in the drawer either. He's slow to recognize things which have been telegraphed way ahead of time to the rest of us, so I can't respect him as a character. I found myself skipping track after track on the CDs because it simply wasn't interesting. Indeed, you can skip the first CD entirely and not miss anything.
So no! Just no. The story was boring, pointless and meaningless. In audio it’s useless because there are no photographs to support the text (not that they do anyway, from what I’ve read in reviews written by others. I can’t recommend this and indeed I highly dis-recommend it.
