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phoenixlatte20's review
5.0
amazing! i love the story and cannot wait for the next one (but i don't have to wait for Escape from Zarahemla which is gonna tie into the next one!!!)
chanizzle's review
3.0
Let's break down what this book really is - 3 different stories, told by 9 'main' characters and 3 minor characters. In past books, the story has been told by different people, but usually maybe 3-4 at most. It got tiring going back and forth between so many people.
The biggest thing I didn't like about this book is that it doesn't end! 2nd biggest thing - every single person in Jim's family that we have ever met before (except one) end up 'time traveling'. Come on - yes this is the end of the series but that does not mean that everyone who has ever had an 'adventure' before needs to be involved again. It's not worth it to the story. There are too many people to keep track of already.
So anyways.... Jim was as philosophical as ever (aka boring), Gidgidonniah and Apollus were amazing like always, and I'm wondering with all the romance going on if the author has found a new genre to write for.
I hope the next book is better, not as complicated, and wraps things up once and for all.
The biggest thing I didn't like about this book is that it doesn't end! 2nd biggest thing - every single person in Jim's family that we have ever met before (except one) end up 'time traveling'. Come on - yes this is the end of the series but that does not mean that everyone who has ever had an 'adventure' before needs to be involved again. It's not worth it to the story. There are too many people to keep track of already.
So anyways.... Jim was as philosophical as ever (aka boring), Gidgidonniah and Apollus were amazing like always, and I'm wondering with all the romance going on if the author has found a new genre to write for.
I hope the next book is better, not as complicated, and wraps things up once and for all.
gmvader's review
3.0
Some authors handle complex stories brilliantly. They all have their limits however. The problem is that most of them don’t realize it. Robert Jordan’s series is beautiful, and then it starts to crumble around the edges. Then it cascades in a giant waterfall of uncountable subplots and side characters. In fact every long series that I’ve read has this same problem. It’s an understandable problem. When you’ve got hundreds or even dozens of characters scattered all across time and space and working toward seemingly different goals things get complicated. Add to that the fact that people want each book to have its own complete arc with a climax for each group of characters, all roughly at the same time and also making progress toward the overall story for the series. Oh yeah, also make sure that each group has equal page time and is working toward the same things in the end, although it’s not readily apparent that that’s the case. Then make all of them converge to the same place and time for the ultimate showdown/last battle/what have you.
Try it sometime. Doing all of this in a single book is a monumental task. Doing it over a trilogy is a lifetime pursuit. Doing it over five books is theoretically feasible. Once you add more books than that you’re going to have to accept tradeoffs. I’ve only rarely seen a series that can remain cohesion for more than five books. After that it becomes a civil engineering disaster.
Heimerdinger is beginning to have some of those problems. I saw some hints in the last book but they’re more apparent in this one. He says the end of this series will take only one more book. I have my doubts – but it could be possible. His biggest problem is that of pacing.
That sounds misleading. Heimerdinger is, as always, very fast paced. Things happen all the time and frequently but not so much that it becomes droll. The pacing that I refer to is the balance between characters. Certain characters seem to have almost pointless plotlines for a couple of books until their story takes front and center and becomes the biggest adventure yet. This is one of those tradeoffs that I mentioned earlier. If he gave each story equal time in each book the pace of the story would slow to that of a lazy stroll. Instead he chooses to stagger it. I’m undecided whether or not this is a complaint. On one hand the pointless parts are… pointless. The exciting parts are pure adrenaline. On the other hand I’ve seen authors try the other way and it is infuriating and painful to wait six years to read a book and then find out after a thousand pages that the overall net effect of the book was that nothing happened.
What I am saying is that, while this current series of Tennis Shoes Adventure books is quite enjoyable and very exciting, they are a bit uneven. As the boy scouts say – and Scar from the Lion King as it happens, he must have been a boy scout – “Be Prepared.”
This story is at least as exciting as the last one and gives more development to some of the characters that seemed gratuitous in the last book. There’s some really cool harkening back to previous books that goes on as well.
There are a few things that are annoying about this book in particular and it applies to Heimerdinger’s writing in general. Things are explained way too explicitly. Writers have to trust their readers to get it. When somebody says to the bad guys, “Hey, here’s my friends, now where’s my reward?” the author does not need to spend a page and half explaining that a betrayal just happened. The people who are too dim to get that probably can’t read anyway.
I also hate the banter between narrators. Heimerdinger has chosen to write these books in first person but with multiple viewpoints. This is a tricky thing to pull off anyway as each character needs to write with a different voice and style – Heimerdinger both succeeds and fails at this to varying degrees but generally makes it work well enough. For a really good example of this kind of story-telling read Bram Stoker’s Dracula, it’s astonishing. The thing that gets annoying is when the narrators will spend the first two pages of the chapter arguing about who will tell which part. Usually this happens when he couldn’t come up with an opening hook for the chapter so he has the characters argue about who will tell the story while dropping hints. It’s a cheap trick and it feels like a cheap trick.
The flaws, however egregious, are actually only perpetrated upon the reader on a few occasions, rendering this volume very good but short of brilliance.
Try it sometime. Doing all of this in a single book is a monumental task. Doing it over a trilogy is a lifetime pursuit. Doing it over five books is theoretically feasible. Once you add more books than that you’re going to have to accept tradeoffs. I’ve only rarely seen a series that can remain cohesion for more than five books. After that it becomes a civil engineering disaster.
Heimerdinger is beginning to have some of those problems. I saw some hints in the last book but they’re more apparent in this one. He says the end of this series will take only one more book. I have my doubts – but it could be possible. His biggest problem is that of pacing.
That sounds misleading. Heimerdinger is, as always, very fast paced. Things happen all the time and frequently but not so much that it becomes droll. The pacing that I refer to is the balance between characters. Certain characters seem to have almost pointless plotlines for a couple of books until their story takes front and center and becomes the biggest adventure yet. This is one of those tradeoffs that I mentioned earlier. If he gave each story equal time in each book the pace of the story would slow to that of a lazy stroll. Instead he chooses to stagger it. I’m undecided whether or not this is a complaint. On one hand the pointless parts are… pointless. The exciting parts are pure adrenaline. On the other hand I’ve seen authors try the other way and it is infuriating and painful to wait six years to read a book and then find out after a thousand pages that the overall net effect of the book was that nothing happened.
What I am saying is that, while this current series of Tennis Shoes Adventure books is quite enjoyable and very exciting, they are a bit uneven. As the boy scouts say – and Scar from the Lion King as it happens, he must have been a boy scout – “Be Prepared.”
This story is at least as exciting as the last one and gives more development to some of the characters that seemed gratuitous in the last book. There’s some really cool harkening back to previous books that goes on as well.
There are a few things that are annoying about this book in particular and it applies to Heimerdinger’s writing in general. Things are explained way too explicitly. Writers have to trust their readers to get it. When somebody says to the bad guys, “Hey, here’s my friends, now where’s my reward?” the author does not need to spend a page and half explaining that a betrayal just happened. The people who are too dim to get that probably can’t read anyway.
I also hate the banter between narrators. Heimerdinger has chosen to write these books in first person but with multiple viewpoints. This is a tricky thing to pull off anyway as each character needs to write with a different voice and style – Heimerdinger both succeeds and fails at this to varying degrees but generally makes it work well enough. For a really good example of this kind of story-telling read Bram Stoker’s Dracula, it’s astonishing. The thing that gets annoying is when the narrators will spend the first two pages of the chapter arguing about who will tell which part. Usually this happens when he couldn’t come up with an opening hook for the chapter so he has the characters argue about who will tell the story while dropping hints. It’s a cheap trick and it feels like a cheap trick.
The flaws, however egregious, are actually only perpetrated upon the reader on a few occasions, rendering this volume very good but short of brilliance.
bookwormmichelle's review
3.0
Well, we waited several years to find out what happened to all these characters. Now we have this big fat book, confusing, full of wild events, impossibly improbable, and we don't even find out if anyone makes it or not! We need to wait ANOTHER however many years to get it all worked out. Sigh. It's really hard to remember everything that happened from so long ago. I also have to confess, I really dislike the long, convoluted explanations of arcane events, speculative Book of Mormon geography, and nutty "Well, it could have happened this way" explanations. I'd just as soon leave those out entirely--I never intended this book to be real history! Just get on with it and get everyone safe and sound already. :-)
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