Rating: WARTY!
This is another short novel I got from Net Galley, but unlike the previous one I blogged, this was not a 100 page excerpt from a four hundred page novel, this was the entire novella, and it was less than ninety pages. It contained two pages of self-promotional, positive reviews which I found to be weird. I already had the ebook, so what is the point of two pages of reviews when I'd already picked it to read? Leave 'em out and save a tree! The reviews were mostly from Foreword and Kirkus. I have zero respect for Kirkus, who never met a novel they didn't like, so their reviews are utterly useless, and I always skip forewords(!), so these two pages were wasted on me.
The story itself is hard to critique without giving away major spoilers. Let me just confine myself to saying that it's never a good sign when the author has to include a note at the end explaining what they just wrote! It was obvious what the author was trying to do. We've all been there, but stories of the type where it turns out it was all a dream in the end, or something along those similarly twisted lines, are typically more of a let-down that an uplift. The main problem with this one for me, was that it was so flighty and disjointed that it was just one long aggravation. I think this would have worked better as a short story than anything longer.
I think it would have been hilarious had JK Rowling ended the Harry Potter heptalogy by having Harry wake-up on the Hogwarts Express as it arrives in the station on that first trip, the entire seven book series having been a dream. Then, the ending would actually have been a real surprise. This was not such a dream novel, but there were no surprises here, only a torturous circular journey that felt more like a Disney ride than an engaging novella. While I wish the author well in his endeavors, I can't recommend this.
