Noah
Dodie Smith is a superstar of writing quotable sentences & paragraphs if I Capture the Castle is any proof. It actually more than makes up for Cassandra's annoying naivety through most of the book and a real uncool move by a character I won't name here.
Plus, uh, the bear incident. Hilarious. Trust me, I'm not giving anything away with that.
A fun read, but not quite up to the standard of Downward-Facing Death. The edition I read (first Kindle edition) had a ton of proofreading errors: missing words, extra words, there/their, and continuity. This wasn't a problem with Downward-Facing Death and not something I've seen with Pollack's books before. Hopefully it's something that can be corrected for future printings/versions.
Regardless, I sure laughed a lot!
[review of the remastered edition]
I'd say barely 4 stars. Author does a good job with some unique technologies and channels the suspense of submarine battle movies. There were many times I couldn't put the book down.
Unfortunately, the book suffers from some...failings of priority. Too much battle—too little exploration and culture. An emphasis on plot—over the lack of sufficient character development. Oh, and there were a few missing words even in this remastered version.
A fun and exciting read and I look forward to reading the rest of the series.
Good story and art. Daughter loves Mabel! But there were numerous grammatical errors. Book would be 5 stars after a proper edit.