Alicia
This book made me FURIOUS. It has no right to only get kind of interesting in the last 25% and exciting in the final <10% while being SO LONG.
World building and history ≠ handing your readers a glossary that requires multiple internal references to parse. If it's important to know to understand the story, make it the story.
Interminable, stilted dialogue that goes for tens of pages and action scenes that pass in a paragraph.
Form and execution notwithstanding, this book is also wildly bigoted, racist, and homophobic.
Also: we are in space, why do I have to read a book about a white boy named PAUL.
An interesting layer between reader and story - the adventures of Super Rabbit Boy and Mole Girl are within a video game, and the players of the game (siblings Sunny and Rue) are sometimes seen playing the game, causing success or mishap in the game world.
The two players, and their avatars, must learn to work with one another and not let pride get in the way of having fun or vanquishing a common foe, represented here by the level bosses. The characters of the game are learning this in a story that would stand on its own, but they are simply mirroring the actions and emotion of the players, a representation of their growth.
I don't know if I've ever read a book intended for 1st-2nd graders at a moderately advanced reading levels that so easily introduces metatextual framing and author surrogates?
Charming and much more educational than I had expected. A little history, a little socialization, a little personal growth and responsibility around chores and behavior and school, a little adventure, a little silliness.
I also really appreciated that the dialogue felt very natural for children, parents, and teachers.
It takes a lot for me to get into adult fantasy. I'm better with YA fantasy - I don't know what it is about the worldbuilding and character development, but something snappier and less dense is what does it for me. I'm trying this year, though, to expand my reading experiences into things that I wouldn't necessarily pick up, and asked my bestie for his recommendations. He told me more than once and emphatically that I must read Hobb's Farseer books.
He finally pressed his well-worn trade paper into my hands when we visited at the end of March, and I promised that I'd start it as soon as I'd finished the serial killer book I was currently reading - I really dislike keeping a lent book too long, as it shows disrespect for having accepted the loan and of putting off the recommender's recommendation, I think. Well, if you're looking at my read dates, you'll see it took me a while to get through this. I think it's the difficulty that I have shifting into a dense world for a chapter of 15-30 pages every day or two and then having to reenter 24 or more hours later. Maybe I'd be a better adult fantasy reader if I was able to sit for hours and really immerse myself.
I really enjoyed how magic was introduced and developed in this world, and the political intrigue - once we got into the story - was well developed. The last 100 pages of this book really flew, and I found myself wishing that the entire story would have been as pacy as the finale; perhaps later books in the series are so, since the world and our characters have been well established in the first.