The premise for this book sounded interesting, but I could not get into it at all, so I didn't get far before I DNF'd. This is based on what I did read. To be fair it's not aimed at me but at a much younger readership; even so I've read many books in that age range before, and enjoyed a lot of them. This one just didn't get there for me because it came across as stupid - with stupid characters in a future dystopian London doing stupid things for no apparent, let alone logical reason. And when I say logical, I mean from their perspective, not from mine.
That's when I felt I could no longer buy into this premise. It was too much of a leap from these characters, none of whom I liked, to what the author evidently expects them to do. Plus it's yet another trilogy where a single volume could tell the story, so no thanks. Some publishers and authors seem to think it's fine to take three times the money from a child to a story that could have been fitted into one volume if it had been told right. I don't like that kind of mercenary approach to children's books. Or any books. That's why so many of mine are available for free, especially during covid times.
For those who're interested, the premise is that this young girl Marta Banks is the leader of a group of young kids who take reckless rides hanging onto the speeding tube trains on the London Underground (London's subway system). How this worked I never could figure out from the sketchy description given in the opening pages of the book, which describes it as a wooden "clawboard." I have no idea what that is or even if it's a real thing that I'm supposed to know about for the purposes of reading this. Well, newsflash, I don't!
So I was at a loss as to what they were actually doing. At first I thought maybe they were using some sort of a sled which they somehow hooked on to the train as it went by, but it made zero sense to me. After I re-read it, it seemed more like they were just hooking onto the side of the train, and then jumping off, but the whole thing was vague and too stupid for me to waste my time on trying to figure out.
One of the guys fails to 'make the jump' and when they go back to see how he's doing, the text reads, "Paul was huffing like an old man trying to start a car...." Ignoring the age-ism here, I don't know how old this author is, but what is it he thinks is involved in starting a car? These days (and this novel is set in the future recall) it invovles involves pressing a button, but there was a time, way, way back, that it involved rotating a crank handle plugged into the front of the engine. I can imagine if someone, old or not, had been doing that fruitlessly for some time, they might be huffing and puffing, but in the future why would anyone be doing that? This is where I quit reading this.
The book blurb claims that Marta is "a girl who risks death every day in the abandoned underground stations of London," but if the stations are abandoned, why are the trains still running? Is it just a few stations that are abandoned? Why? I dunno. The authors doesn't tell. How did the kids get in there? If they break in and are not supposed to be there, why are they not reported by the train drivers? Or are the trains automated and have no drivers? In which case why aren't the kids reported by the passengers? The train has windows. If it's purely freight, why the windows? I got this impression this wasn't too well thought through, and that impression seriously dissuades me from continuing on in a novel - any novel.
Some people might argue that I haven't read enough of this to review it, but they're wrong. If you start reading a book and immediately it starts turning you off reading it any further, then that's a review in and of itself. I'm not telling anyone not to read this; I'm telling you that I didn't like this book, and I told you why. Deal with it!
