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rainwatersparkBorrowed another dozen books from the library, devouring them whenever I can (a.k.a. whenever my mom isn't yelling at me to do something or another).
So yet another of these paranormal romances, this time between a not-so-normal girl and a wizard. Unfortunately, it's still not much good. More boring first-person narration, and--this might be a first--the wizard dude is also pretty boring. He's neither a charming jerk or a stuffy nice guy. He's just...bland. As is the girl. And he angsts about his curse, which takes half the book to find out...and it's not even that interesting. "Oh noes, I've inherited this black splotch on my hand from my grandfather, which will eat away at my magic, and it makes me so ugly and tainted"--gragh, stuff it already. It would have been marginally more intriguing if his stupidity brought about the curse, but it's not even his fault, so why the hell is he so angsty about it?
The premise of this book is that Justin Fisher, who hasn't been home or seen his parents in many years, returns home, only to find that his parents are both dead. He then visits their graves, and finds a tombstone with his own name on it.
Sometimes, I find "realistic" fiction (fiction without magic or supernatural elements) more unbelievable than fantasy. This is one of those times. I think I would have preferred it if there were some supernatural explanation. As it was, the Big Reveal was not very interesting and somewhat predictable. The characters, to me, were boring, uninteresting, and hard to empathize with.
Actually, reading this novel reminded me of The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edward, which I really liked. Both stories involve a father who makes a terrible decision concerning one of his children, and that decision, wrapped in secrets and lies, splinters the rest of the family. But whereas The Memory Keeper's Daughter was poignant and touching, The Language of Secrets was not. In the latter, characters' reactions were simple and one-dimensional, rather than as complex as they were in the former.
This book's main message was something along the lines of, don't let the past control you for the rest of your life, but I felt that many other novels had done this, and pulled it off better. There are two interwoven narrative lines, but both of them seemed disconnected, featuring a constellation of events that were apparently just thrown in to make it seem like many important things were happening, when there weren't any. Plot points are dangled without being tidily resolved. The Big Reveal, as I mentioned before, was anticlimactic,* and considering this entire novel is built on it...well, by the end, it seemed like a house whose foundation had collapsed, leaving behind a sagging bundle of wood and shingle.
*
** SPOILER WARNING **
I feel that, at this point in the history of literary trends, psychological disorders no longer make for convincing Big Secrets/Big Reveals in "realistic" fiction. That, for me, was the root of the problem with The Language of Secrets.
** END SPOILER **
So yet another of these paranormal romances, this time between a not-so-normal girl and a wizard. Unfortunately, it's still not much good. More boring first-person narration, and--this might be a first--the wizard dude is also pretty boring. He's neither a charming jerk or a stuffy nice guy. He's just...bland. As is the girl. And he angsts about his curse, which takes half the book to find out...and it's not even that interesting. "Oh noes, I've inherited this black splotch on my hand from my grandfather, which will eat away at my magic, and it makes me so ugly and tainted"--gragh, stuff it already. It would have been marginally more intriguing if his stupidity brought about the curse, but it's not even his fault, so why the hell is he so angsty about it?
The premise of this book is that Justin Fisher, who hasn't been home or seen his parents in many years, returns home, only to find that his parents are both dead. He then visits their graves, and finds a tombstone with his own name on it.
Sometimes, I find "realistic" fiction (fiction without magic or supernatural elements) more unbelievable than fantasy. This is one of those times. I think I would have preferred it if there were some supernatural explanation. As it was, the Big Reveal was not very interesting and somewhat predictable. The characters, to me, were boring, uninteresting, and hard to empathize with.
Actually, reading this novel reminded me of The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edward, which I really liked. Both stories involve a father who makes a terrible decision concerning one of his children, and that decision, wrapped in secrets and lies, splinters the rest of the family. But whereas The Memory Keeper's Daughter was poignant and touching, The Language of Secrets was not. In the latter, characters' reactions were simple and one-dimensional, rather than as complex as they were in the former.
This book's main message was something along the lines of, don't let the past control you for the rest of your life, but I felt that many other novels had done this, and pulled it off better. There are two interwoven narrative lines, but both of them seemed disconnected, featuring a constellation of events that were apparently just thrown in to make it seem like many important things were happening, when there weren't any. Plot points are dangled without being tidily resolved. The Big Reveal, as I mentioned before, was anticlimactic,* and considering this entire novel is built on it...well, by the end, it seemed like a house whose foundation had collapsed, leaving behind a sagging bundle of wood and shingle.
*
** SPOILER WARNING **
I feel that, at this point in the history of literary trends, psychological disorders no longer make for convincing Big Secrets/Big Reveals in "realistic" fiction. That, for me, was the root of the problem with The Language of Secrets.
** END SPOILER **
