Rating: WARTY!
I found the idea of this novel interesting because it was similar to an idea I'd had for a novel of my own and I was curious as to whether I'd have to ditch my own idea or whether I could still go ahead with it down the road. You can't copyright an idea of course, only a finished work, but nevertheless I wouldn't want to publish a novel that turned out to be quite similar to one someone else had already published. I wish the writers of YA trilogies would learn that lesson instead of endlessly trying to clone books like The Hunger Games, but I'm not that lucky!
Anyway, I decided to read this and see what's what. I didn't get very far. It's first person to begin with which is so unrealistic that it turned me off this novel, and the writing in general was not to my taste. It seemed rather amateur and Darren Shan, actually an Irish author by the name of Darren O'Shaughnessy, uses a lot of British expressions which may not be well understood by American readers. Plus the main character's age is difficult to guess. The book description claims he's young, but he seems to think and behave well beyond his years - more like, say, an author in this late forties?!
One day this "kid" is ditching school because he's depressed about his dead bother, and he sees a girl disappear into some paving stones on a bridge over the Thames in London. He finds that he can magically use the same escape route, so he ditches not only school, but his life and follows her down the rabbit hole so to speak. Archibald in Wonderland. Up until this point it had been quite interesting, if a little simplistic and maudlin, but from that time onward, it went downhill. Rather than find a magical or engrossing world, we found only boring tunnels and eventually an angry girl, who pulls a knife on the kid. His non-reaction to that is ridiculously not credible given what he's done so far. It's like we're dealing with a different boy altogether.
The author writes at this point, "I don't yelp or flinch, but I fall perfectly still," - given that the two people are elevated from the ground at this point, the choice to use 'fall' in place of 'become' or something like that, is a poor one! It's also silly given that this is in first person, and it makes no sense given that this is after this "kid" has voluntarily chosen to follow the girl down into the tunnels, has kept going into complete darkness despite not knowing if he'll ever get out, or if the tunnel will narrow down and trap or even strangle him. He's eventually tracked her down, and now he's terrified into paralysis? It made no sense, whatsoever. It was absurd given it was first person voice, and this is where I decided to ditch it at somewhat under 20% in. I can't commend this as a worthy read. Mine will be a better story! Trust me!
