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hidekisohma's review against another edition
2.0
I'm going to start off by saying, I REALLY wanted to like this book. I love portal fantasies and from what I saw, this seemed to be right up my alley. I haven't been so sorely disappointed in a book in quite a while.
It's going to take a while for me to say everything I want to about this book, but here it goes.
First of all, I can't stand the main character Jon-tom. He, in a word, is boring. He is one of the most boring main characters i have come across in a while. He is such a milk toast, wonder bread, by the numbers protagonist it actually hurt.
After 400+ pages I could not determine what his personality was. He was literally just...main character. That's all i got from him. He is a college student who can play a guitar....that's...about all i got from him. Everything about this character is dull.
We're introduced to this guy and he just is IN this fantasy world. There's no introduction to him prior, he's just...there. so when he first shows up i just...i don't know anything about this guy, his backstory, nothing. He's just...there.
He's thrown into this world of anthropomorphic animals and his first thought is "where are some humans?" He KNOWS he's in another world and that these wouldn't be the same kind of humans, and all the animals speak English (for some reason. It's not explained why) but he feels he really NEEDS to talk to a human. He then meets a female who's the oh so original 'not the same as other girls' trope, and of course, he immediately wants to bang her.
which brings us to the second problem with this book. Okay, we're in a world of talking animals, but nothing really happens in the story to make this relevant. I don't FEEL like these characters are animals. Just saying "oh, he's an otter" doesn't make me believe he's an otter. There's no like..problems with not having an opposable thumb, or species relations, or anything like that. you're basically just TELLING me that they're a different species. I just found it very lazy as literally every single character could have been a human by replacing 3 words and you never would have known the difference.
Speaking of these problems, later in the book we're introduced to another female character who gets brought from our world, and i swear to god, no joke, her character flaw is "i'm too beautiful" i honest to god thought that was a joke. but no, the author was serious. like, here's an actual quote from the book. "That's my deformity Jon-tom. My lack of one. I'm cursed with beauty.... i'm not being facetious or boastful. It's something i've just had to try and live with."
Those are quite possibly some of the stupidest sentences i have ever read in a book. congratulations.
Ah yes. Characters. While we're on this topic, tell me if you can see the issue here.
otter: male
dragon: male
turtle: male
bat: male
rabbit: male
human: female
human: female
That's right. FIVE non-human tagalongs, and the only two females are humans. That just seems...weird? I don't know, first of all it's weird that you have humans AT ALL in your strange fantasy setting in which the author writes that the difference between the MC and the other humans are that...they're a little shorter? that's about it. That's just...that's just lazy. Also, why the hell aren't any female tagalongs non-human? That was such a strange thing to me, i was waiting for one of the group to be a non-human female but it never happened. Confused the hell out of me. Also, other than both being the object of MC's affections...that's basically all they're around for. Long story short, i've come to the conclusion that this author can't write females...like at all. So since he can't even write HUMAN females properly, there was no chance he was going to try a non-human one. There's only 2 non-human females that speak in the entire book. one's basically a fox prostitute and the other is an evil bug queen. So....yeah. there's that.
The book in itself just abruptly...kind of stops. Like, i honestly thought i was missing some pages at first. there's no wrap up, no big "here comes a battle!" or something..it just...kind of ends at the end of a paragraph. that confused the hell out of me.
World building wise? Eh. i've seen better. It's generic fantasy with no real twist. you'd think with "anthro animal world" there'd be some cool world building. NOPE!
I could go on and on about how this book disappointed me, but i think you get the jist of it by now. I REALLY wanted to like this book, but after finishing it, I just can't. A LARGE chunk of that being the fact that i can't stand the MC and how boring he is.
Overall, a 2/5. I can't give it a 1 because there was a good idea somewhere in here, but it was almost like the author was afraid to go too far and pulled back in most areas. The potential for this book was amazing, but was squandered, and that, honest to god is the worst part about it. 2/5.
It's going to take a while for me to say everything I want to about this book, but here it goes.
First of all, I can't stand the main character Jon-tom. He, in a word, is boring. He is one of the most boring main characters i have come across in a while. He is such a milk toast, wonder bread, by the numbers protagonist it actually hurt.
After 400+ pages I could not determine what his personality was. He was literally just...main character. That's all i got from him. He is a college student who can play a guitar....that's...about all i got from him. Everything about this character is dull.
We're introduced to this guy and he just is IN this fantasy world. There's no introduction to him prior, he's just...there. so when he first shows up i just...i don't know anything about this guy, his backstory, nothing. He's just...there.
He's thrown into this world of anthropomorphic animals and his first thought is "where are some humans?" He KNOWS he's in another world and that these wouldn't be the same kind of humans, and all the animals speak English (for some reason. It's not explained why) but he feels he really NEEDS to talk to a human. He then meets a female who's the oh so original 'not the same as other girls' trope, and of course, he immediately wants to bang her.
which brings us to the second problem with this book. Okay, we're in a world of talking animals, but nothing really happens in the story to make this relevant. I don't FEEL like these characters are animals. Just saying "oh, he's an otter" doesn't make me believe he's an otter. There's no like..problems with not having an opposable thumb, or species relations, or anything like that. you're basically just TELLING me that they're a different species. I just found it very lazy as literally every single character could have been a human by replacing 3 words and you never would have known the difference.
Speaking of these problems, later in the book we're introduced to another female character who gets brought from our world, and i swear to god, no joke, her character flaw is "i'm too beautiful" i honest to god thought that was a joke. but no, the author was serious. like, here's an actual quote from the book. "That's my deformity Jon-tom. My lack of one. I'm cursed with beauty.... i'm not being facetious or boastful. It's something i've just had to try and live with."
Those are quite possibly some of the stupidest sentences i have ever read in a book. congratulations.
Ah yes. Characters. While we're on this topic, tell me if you can see the issue here.
otter: male
dragon: male
turtle: male
bat: male
rabbit: male
human: female
human: female
That's right. FIVE non-human tagalongs, and the only two females are humans. That just seems...weird? I don't know, first of all it's weird that you have humans AT ALL in your strange fantasy setting in which the author writes that the difference between the MC and the other humans are that...they're a little shorter? that's about it. That's just...that's just lazy. Also, why the hell aren't any female tagalongs non-human? That was such a strange thing to me, i was waiting for one of the group to be a non-human female but it never happened. Confused the hell out of me. Also, other than both being the object of MC's affections...that's basically all they're around for. Long story short, i've come to the conclusion that this author can't write females...like at all. So since he can't even write HUMAN females properly, there was no chance he was going to try a non-human one. There's only 2 non-human females that speak in the entire book. one's basically a fox prostitute and the other is an evil bug queen. So....yeah. there's that.
The book in itself just abruptly...kind of stops. Like, i honestly thought i was missing some pages at first. there's no wrap up, no big "here comes a battle!" or something..it just...kind of ends at the end of a paragraph. that confused the hell out of me.
World building wise? Eh. i've seen better. It's generic fantasy with no real twist. you'd think with "anthro animal world" there'd be some cool world building. NOPE!
I could go on and on about how this book disappointed me, but i think you get the jist of it by now. I REALLY wanted to like this book, but after finishing it, I just can't. A LARGE chunk of that being the fact that i can't stand the MC and how boring he is.
Overall, a 2/5. I can't give it a 1 because there was a good idea somewhere in here, but it was almost like the author was afraid to go too far and pulled back in most areas. The potential for this book was amazing, but was squandered, and that, honest to god is the worst part about it. 2/5.
lissydizzy's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
liszt91's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
ianmcnamara's review against another edition
5.0
Really enjoyed this. The graphic audio version of this book was fantastic. Can’t wait to see john develop his talents further in future books.
lollyrox's review
adventurous
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
wetdryvac's review against another edition
4.0
An old favorite, and still quite nice. Addresses various isms fairly well, while also somewhat playing into them. Nifty work nevertheless.
thomcat's review against another edition
3.0
A ripping good fantasy, complete with dimensionally displaced human, wise turtle, wisecracking otter and Marxist dragon. Also a fair bit of testosterone, with the two female characters described as fiery beauties. The biggest problem with the book it stops well short of the end of the story, which continues in the next book. Not satisfying.
First read this book and it's sequel when they were written, back in the early 80s. I don't remember how the second book ended, but I'm fairly sure the third wasn't available at the time, and I read no further. The first six books were published over three years, so Alan Dean Foster was really cranking them out. He published two more in the early 90s.
First read this book and it's sequel when they were written, back in the early 80s. I don't remember how the second book ended, but I'm fairly sure the third wasn't available at the time, and I read no further. The first six books were published over three years, so Alan Dean Foster was really cranking them out. He published two more in the early 90s.