Author: Jaclyn Moriarty
Publisher: Scholastic
Rating: WARTY!
This is yet another novel which is book two in a series and yet offers no indication whatsoever on the cover that it's so, which is to explain once more why I'm reading a novel out of sequence. It's also five hundred pages. Seriously? That's 25% more than you had to wade through in volume 1! Moriarty evidently has SKS (Stephen King Syndrome), whereby you cannot keep yourself from writing too much. That makes it rather amusing that this novel is titled 'Cracks in the Kingdom'. You need to make a novel like this volumes 2 and 3, each about 250 pages, not just volume 2 at 500 if you're at all serious about doing this properly.
While this story sounded great from the from the blurb (which also offers no indication that this is book two of a series), the problem I ran into was FIVE HUNDRED PAGES. There's actually no list of books published by this author in the front pages, so there's nothing there to guide us to the idea that this is book two of a series either, although it is mentioned inside. But at least Florence and the machine gets a mention! And I do love that Moriarty is an Australian who has lived in Britain and Canada, so there's a lot of familiar slang and terminology in here.
The reason it's 500 pages is that the author obviously has no idea how to self-edit, resulting in endless rambling which goes nowhere and does it very slowly. If this had been a new novel from a first time writer, it would have been kicked out on its ear, but because the writer has a foot in the door and an apparently successful first novel beforehand, they're granted far more extravagance than a new writer would be. Chalk another round of idiocy up to Big Publishing™.
The book itself is rather weird, too. It's not divided by chapters, but by "parts" which are merely chapters, so I don't get that distinction. Each "part" is further sub-divided into numbered sections, which make little sense. Part two, for example has no sub-divisions, whereas other parts have several, but the break points don't seem like natural stopping points, and even within the numbered sections there are break-gaps in the text! Why Moriarty couldn't simply number them as consecutive chapters is a mystery. But it's her novel, so whatever.
So the story here is that there are two parallel worlds: ours, and the kingdom of Cello (no word on pronunciation: is is Sello or Chello?). Apparently the entire royal family (save Princess Ko) has been kidnapped and abducted to our world. In order to recover them, Ko calls a summit of random teens. The conceit is that Ko is smart but acts like an idiot so no one will suspect that she's secretly running the kingdom. The truth is that she actually is an idiot.
When these teens brainstorm to try and come up with ideas as to why the royal family has been abducted, they fail to consider two salient facts: first of all, perhaps the reason Ko is the only royal who was not abducted is that she's the one behind the abductions? Secondly, why was Elliot Baranski's father also abducted? Elliot is one of the random teens, except that he's not so random since he's in contact with the other world (our world) by means of his discovery of a crack through which handwritten notes can pass.
We're introduced to this means of communication early in this novel, as Elliot trades notes through a crack housed in an old TV set, where they're received and responded to by Madeleine, a girl in our world who shares Moriarty's inability to self-edit. She uses a parking meter to transmit her communiqués. Frankly at about 20% into this novel I was convinced that her meter was a quarter shy of a parking ticket. Perhaps it's with good reason she's named Madeleine?
Moriarty twice describes the TV in the space of fifty pages, so maybe she thinks her readers have a short attention span (in which case, why a 500 page novel?!)? Or maybe the author does? A good editor would have caught this, so note that big Publishing™ is no guarantee of competent editing!
One thing I don't get is why these communications, between Elliot and Mad-eleine, have to take place at midnight. In fact, this whole thing was ridiculous, not because of the TV and the parking meter, but because they're sending excessively long hand-written notes to each other. When people do this via their cell phones, it's called texting, and even dumb people have learned to use what might be termed 'textish' in order to facilitate speed (and save on charges). The fact that Elliot and Mad-eleine cannot seem to grasp the principles of compression and abbrev. even after communicating like this for some time, is testimony to how profoundly dumb these two are. And they're our heroes here?
Aside from that, the very mechanics of writing notes that are as long as Madeleine's is unwieldy. It's simply not possible to write the notes she writes as fast as we're expected to believe she writes them! Moriarty writes this as though they're trading notes every few seconds! No one can write that fast (and that neatly!) and at such length. When you're in blind communication like this, you need to respond quickly otherwise you leave your recipient in the dark as to what's going on. They have both had enough experience at this to have learned this important point even if they were of average intelligence, but neither of them seems to be able to learn, so the entire episode plummets the suspension of disbelief into the festering cesspool of bad writing.
There seem to be a few large plot holes here, too. I get neither the point nor the role of the royals, for one thing. It seems like they have absolutely no power - just like, for example, the British royals, so what's their function? They can't do anything regarding the cracks since studying the cracks is illegal! This is another issue, too, since newly discovered cracks must be reported and are immediately sealed by the WSU, yet they can't be opened? How come they know enough about them to seal them, but not enough to open them? Why is it illegal to study them? Who made these laws if not the royals? Something is wrong here! Maybe this is all explained in book one, but if Moriarty can describe the TV twice in fifty pages, why could she not disseminate some of this information again, too?!
As happens all-too-often in YA stories, I found myself falling in love with a secondary character rather than with any of the main characters. In this case it was Belle. Belle is a friend of Mad-eleine's and is kick-ass. I liked Jack, too, but not his name. How come all these adventure guys are named Jack? Seriously? Rest assured I will never name a character Jack.
The bottom line, however, is that I got about half-way through this and I could not stand to turn another page because it was so tedious. I rate this novel warty and then some.
