So, I loved this book. Like, want to recommend it to everyone I know sort of loved. Okay, well not everyone, because it’s not really an everyone sort of book.
I’m pretty sure that ‘Andrew Smith’ is the name Stephen King uses when he wants to write a completely bad ass YA novel without anyone knowing. Yeah, this book was that good.
It also wasn’t anything like what I was expecting. It was everything I want in a fantasy book though: dark, disturbing, beautifully written. The audiobook version captured all of this perfectly. The whole thing was very realistic in its telling so that even though it is clearly a fantasy novel, it reads like something that could really be happening.
Teenage Jack gets drunk at a party and ends up kidnapped and barely escaping before the man can do much more than touch him a little. Did the plot really need this? Maybe, maybe not. I think it was a perfect way to set up Jack’s unstable state of mind as he headed to England for two weeks. Maybe without all that happening he wouldn’t have bothered looking through the glasses. Maybe without all of that happening he wouldn’t have been able to look through them.
But Jack does look through them and he is transported to Marbury, a dark world where he is fighting for his life. Meanwhile, his real life is falling to pieces around him.
OMG, I loved it.
Yeah, Jack is a bit of a dick, but lots of teen boys are. Conner might be a little bit of a homophobe, but lots of teen boys are. The characters felt real because they weren’t perfect. Would a sixteen-year-old boy have sex with a hot British girl on vacation? Absolutely. I’ve decided many women have a hard time writing teen boys. They want their characters to be the perfect guys they wanted as teens. This is not a book about perfect guys.
I never knew where I was with this book. For a while I believed it was all real. Then I thought maybe it was all in Jack’s head. Then I came back to thinking it was real. I couldn’t stop listening to the damn thing even as I wanted it to last longer.
So excited that there is a sequel. The only thing that distracted me from the awesomeness of the book was how often Jack referred to himself as Jack. That got old. But I’ll forgive you, Stephen…I mean Andrew, because your book was amazing.
Pick this up today!