Rating: WORTHY!
This was a great little novel (part of the Dusky Hollows Series, which runs to something like eight volumes as of this review, and only $3 each in ebook form as of this writing, so definitely buy-able!) which I enjoyed immensely even though I'm not remotely its intended age group - or gender, for that matter. It had a lot of writing issues, mostly towards the beginning of the book, but in the end it proved a point I've made several times in this blog: that I'm willing to put up with a novel that's significantly less than brilliantly written if the author gives me a good story! The odd thing about this author is that she appears to have no website, and there are other authors that might be easily confused with her. There's a Nanora Sweet, for example, and a Nancy Sweetland, so there's a delightful bit of a mystery here!
This is a good story. It's different and inventive, and has some cool writing and plotting in it, and when Ivy and Carrie end-up dragged into the alternate world, the story takes hilarious and gripping turns. This is why I loved this book and was willing to put up with a significant number of writing issues. It was completely adorable. This other world, the world of King Glome and Princess Minerva was thoroughly captivating, and the way Carrie won over the snotty princess was brilliant. Ivy's story was equally enthralling, and when she came out with lines like, "Change of plans. I'm going to hurt you." It made my day. I read that part on my lunch break and despite being interrupted several times, I came out of that lunch break completely refreshed and smiling. I owe Nan Sweet for that, so I am volunteering right here and now to be a beta reader for any book she writes! I don't make that offer often, and it's not like any author ever takes me up on it, but there it is. I don't care!
But I digress. As ever. Anyway, the story is about ten-year-olds Carrie and Ivy, who are asked, as a class project, to take care of an egg. Anyone who takes good care of it gets to skip some class work, and if you take care of it over a weekend, you get to skip two periods of class work. Ivy isn't the slightest bit interested, and Carrie is so upset by her parents breaking-up that she's not even there that day, but both of these girls end up sharing an amazing discovery about the egg, and finding their narrow world expand beyond their wildest imaginings because of it.
As a public service announcement, I have to inject a note of warning here. At one point, I read, "They lived in a small town and never locked the house up" to which I have to say, b>these people are morons! I don't care where you live, it's never safe to leave your property unprotected, especially if you're sleeping in said property. But this is a story, not a documentary or an advisory brochure, so this is as valid a thing to write as anything, I guess!
The story is beautifully written for the most part, but there were, as I said, issues. For example, Nan, Sweet as she may be, has a serious problem differentiating 'its' from' it's':
"...without it's fleece-blanketed box..."
"...had brown tufts of fur around it's face..."
"... sitting on it's haunches..."
The rule of thumb is if you cannot substitute 'it is' and have the sentence make sense, then it's 'its'!
Not many people know this, evidently, but ancient animals such as pterodactyls and pteranodons were not dinosaurs. they were pterosaurs. And the past tense of 'tread' is 'trod'. And speaking of birds, or of flying creatures at least, " blue top-not" really needs to be " blue top-knot". "...when Carrie and Ivy pet her head..." should be 'petted', and so on.
There were many other issues, including ones where a spell-checker won't help, such as this sentence: "... few holes were starting to show at the seems..." which should have read, 'seams'. There's also an issue with the creature named a 'gollivant' - this is rendered as 'gallivant' in one or two places. This is a case where a spell-checker will actively work against you! Another problem was an issue of confused verb tenses as in, "...few young ones pointed and grunting as if she were in some kind of zoo..." where 'grunting' ought to have been 'grunted'.
Other issues were more general in nature, such as where one character's mom, who is a nurse, is described as wearing a hat. Nurses tend not to wear hats these days - not in the US, unless it's some oddball religious order hospital perhaps. Indeed, when I worked in a hospital and drew a cartoon for some event the nurses were putting on, I was told that nurses are trying to get away from that image, which I fully supported and understood, but this was a cartoon, not a life-like depiction. There are conventions in cartoons which these people evidently simply didn't get. needless to say I was quite obviously working in the wrong place!
Since this blog is as much about writing as it is about reading, I have to raise another interesting writing issue which wasn't so much out-and-out wrong, as a case of "how could this be written better?" In order to keep her egg warm, Ivy is described as, "Pulling an afghan throw that her great Aunt had knitted out of the closet." Most people knit these things from wool or some sort of synthetic yarn, but more power to this aunt if she can knit something from a closet! Better wording might have been: "From the closet, she pulled an Afghan throw which her aunt had knitted." But you can write that off as being too picky if you like.
But these, for me, were pretty minor and picky. They may irritate others more than they did me. For me, it was the quality of the story that matters. I'd rather read one where there are some issues, but the story is great, than read a really technically well-written novel which is boring or stupid. It all comes down to whether it's a worthy read, and this one is, beyond question. Despite not being the target audience, I'm honestly interested in reading more of these adventures. I loved the way each main character, Carrie and Ivy, had their own story, and in the alternate land, one was rather scary while the other was really funny. it made for a refreshing read as we switched back and forth to follow the progress each made in this new world.
I fully recommend this book.
