I had quite some problems with this book. However, I will try to put it in terms that may help others decide whether it is for them or not. I'm sure PI had quite some problems with this book. However, I will try to put it in terms that may help others decide whether it is for them or not. I'm sure Purdie and her team have worked very hard to get this story out there and a lot of people have been enjoying it (as evidenced by my colleague recommended it to me).
First the positives. The premise is interesting and fun. A forest that is alive, hostile to humans (either taking them or repelling them) and the goal for the main character to break the curse and save her mother. I enjoyed the moments of world building. The forest is an interesting place, its rules are interesting and its inhabitants as well. They make for some fascinating characters to meet. And I think the resolution of the premise was interesting. So kudo's to the story beats of the main plot.
Now for the rest. This book was only 342 pages and until halfway, around chapter twenty-something, I was bored to death. I almost DNF'd at several points and the only reason I wanted to finish was because I promised my colleague I'd read it and it was this short. If you've got so few pages, I believe you should not have so much redundancy and repetitiveness as this book has.
I really disliked the character work for two reasons. First it seems that each important character is only defined by one personality trait and 2-3 motivations/characteristics or inciting events. To illustrate I will give them as they are almost immediately introduced with the character.
Axel: has a great physique, has lost his fiancée Ella, wants to solve things for Clara. Henni: is Shy and correct, feels guilty about her sister Ella's disappearance, loves lingonberries. Clara: Misses her mother, Had scary cards read for her, is stubborn, and suffers from scoliosis.
And we need to talk about the scoliosis as an example. Now I'm all for representation of disabilities. But I think that we got a fragment every second chapter about her uneven hips, her S-curve, her special shoe with hardly any relevance to the story. I can understand that it takes an extra toll on your back if you go through these hardships, but I'm also sure that at this level anyone with a worse physique than Axel would have aches in their back and everywhere. At no point did this limit her.
But this is just one example. Especially in the beginning, only these traits, continuously are rotated to depict these characters. There seems to be no personal history worth mentioning, no other relationships than with each other and Ella. So, as a consequence, it takes half the story for any interesting dynamics to exist, as the only intricacies that exist are those that originate during the story itself.
The second reason I really disliked the character work is that I was constantly taken out of the story by really weird thoughts and actions by our main character. Again, this was especially in the beginning, but also at a later point in the story this resurfaces, for other characters as well. It felt like Purdie knew what story beat she wanted, what circumstances this required and then only reverse engineered everybodies behaviour and attitude only for that chapter and the chapter before for convenience.
An example is when they finally manage to enter the forest and only at nightfall do they feel tension from being in a forest that can attack, kill and has disappeared many villagers....not to mention that they go and sleep in separate places to provide each other with privacy...which I actually think was what Purdie was going for as everything up to this point was completely inexplicable in terms of behaviour. They had to forget they were in a dangerous place. Similarly later in the story Henni suddenly has this scene where she is extremely confident, quick to respond and highly analytical...and it really feels like it is for plot reasons. If these were the only two examples, that would be okay, but it was not.
In summary, I feel this is a book with an interesting premise and a decent plot but with extremely weird and flat character moments, magnified by repetition. That so many other people like it, I can only explain with them having a higher suspension of disbelief so they are not bothered by these flaws. The alternative would be that there are actually a lot of people that think the way our characters think, which is a terrifying thought.......more
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