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A review by bookph1le
Glow by Amy Kathleen Ryan
1.0
It wasn't long after I started listening to the Glow audiobook that I noticed it was suffering from one of the great flaws of the split perspective novel: I found one side of the story far, far stronger than the other, and was annoyed when I had to listen to the perspective I didn't like. Using the split perspectives device is always such a risk, and I'm finding more and more that it's one that doesn't work particularly well most of the time. This in and of itself might not have killed the novel for me, had there not also been a lot of seemingly contradictory things going on. There will be some spoilers in this review.
I'll start with what I didn't like: Kieran's perspective. Right away, I was not a fan of the character. From the beginning, I felt the author was setting the reader up to be leery of Kieran. It's unclear exactly what his motives are when he proposes to Waverly. This may be because the story is told from Waverly's perspective, so it's difficult to tell if she's misreading him but, still, I already was hesitant to connect with him, and things didn't get better from there. In general, I thought Kieran was too whiny and passive for me to root for him. However, he's by far not the only male character that I did not like.
I thought it was strange that Waverly was a little attracted to Seth, who seems to be a really awful person. I get the feeling that there are meant to be depths to Seth, but having Waverly disappear from the story right away nixes any chance to get to see other facets of him in the first installment. Instead, he seems to be nothing more than a bully who becomes a petty tyrant.
The power struggle between Kieran and Seth was just plain annoying and silly to me. Here they are, thrown into a terrible situation where the girls have been kidnapped and many of the adults have been killed, and the two of them spend most of their time together bickering. I could see them not getting a long later, once they're trying to establish some sort of order in the aftermath of the attack, but I just could not buy that they'd be fighting the entire time there are all these external forces at work. The whole dynamic between the two of them seemed like petty fighting over who would get to be alpha male, and I was really turned off by it.
Waverly's perspective was far, far more interesting, and I'd have preferred if Ryan had stuck with this particular aspect of the story. I was really intrigued and disturbed by the idea of the girls being taken, mainly because I knew exactly what was in store for them. I have to admit that I was a little reluctant to listen to some of the novel because I was afraid of what might happen to the girls. Though having their eggs harvested was not what I had been expecting, I still found this to be particularly horrifying. However, my criticism with this part is the lack of reaction the girls showed. Yes, they did mention a couple of times that they weren't happy about it, but I just found it so hard to buy the idea that they were seeing New Horizon women walking around pregnant and, yet, Waverly never experienced any real angst over it. This was especially incongruous, considering there was so much emphasis on Waverly's marrying young because of her fertility.
As for the youthful marriage, it did not ring at all true to me that Waverly's mother would be so on board with it. I could see if she were a couple of generations removed from the days of marrying later in life, but since she herself had gotten married when she was older, I really thought she should have been a lot more conflicted about the idea of Waverly having to marry and become a mother at such a young age.
Waverly's struggle with Anne Mather is interesting, as is her rather conflicted relationship with Amanda. Still, I didn't think Waverly's mixed feelings about Amanda were developed well enough. It was fine for her to be sort of indifferent on the surface, but there should have been a lot more going on in her head, particularly once Amanda became pregnant.
I think the thing that ultimately turned me off from the novel was the turn it took with regard to religion. First, I had a problem with the New Horizon being termed the "religious" ship when it was so clearly a "Christian" ship. It seemed to me that a situation like that would call for a more diverse representation of the human race (if only in the interest of genetic diversity) and that there should have been more Muslims represented, along with people who were Jewish, Hindu, etc. I get the feeling that the author was sticking with comfortable territory, but the problem is that this makes the world seem unrealistic, which is never a good thing for a novel.
I was also flabbergasted when Kieran suddenly starts preaching away like Anne Mather. I'm not sure if the author's intent is to develop this in later novels, showing the contrast between people who use religion for good and those who use it as an excuse to commit heinous acts. Maybe this is her intention, but it just felt so, so odd to me that the story switches from having a fanatic like Anne Mather to having Kieran use religion as a device for unifying the boys. Um, wasn't this what caused all those problems on the New Horizon? Also, judging by the small clues dropped, such as Waverly's mom saying "yuck" to the idea of a religious wedding, I just could not believe that so many of the boys would jump right on board with Kieran's approach. After all, this was supposed to be a ship full of secular people, which makes me think it likely there'd have been quite a few skeptics on board.
All in all, I was really not impressed with this novel. It had a lot of interesting ideas and themes, but I didn't feel that any of them were very well developed, and I couldn't get past what felt like such inconsistencies. Maybe Ryan will ultimately be able to tie them all together, but I don't plan on reading the other books in the series to find out.
I'll start with what I didn't like: Kieran's perspective. Right away, I was not a fan of the character. From the beginning, I felt the author was setting the reader up to be leery of Kieran. It's unclear exactly what his motives are when he proposes to Waverly. This may be because the story is told from Waverly's perspective, so it's difficult to tell if she's misreading him but, still, I already was hesitant to connect with him, and things didn't get better from there. In general, I thought Kieran was too whiny and passive for me to root for him. However, he's by far not the only male character that I did not like.
I thought it was strange that Waverly was a little attracted to Seth, who seems to be a really awful person. I get the feeling that there are meant to be depths to Seth, but having Waverly disappear from the story right away nixes any chance to get to see other facets of him in the first installment. Instead, he seems to be nothing more than a bully who becomes a petty tyrant.
The power struggle between Kieran and Seth was just plain annoying and silly to me. Here they are, thrown into a terrible situation where the girls have been kidnapped and many of the adults have been killed, and the two of them spend most of their time together bickering. I could see them not getting a long later, once they're trying to establish some sort of order in the aftermath of the attack, but I just could not buy that they'd be fighting the entire time there are all these external forces at work. The whole dynamic between the two of them seemed like petty fighting over who would get to be alpha male, and I was really turned off by it.
Waverly's perspective was far, far more interesting, and I'd have preferred if Ryan had stuck with this particular aspect of the story. I was really intrigued and disturbed by the idea of the girls being taken, mainly because I knew exactly what was in store for them. I have to admit that I was a little reluctant to listen to some of the novel because I was afraid of what might happen to the girls. Though having their eggs harvested was not what I had been expecting, I still found this to be particularly horrifying. However, my criticism with this part is the lack of reaction the girls showed. Yes, they did mention a couple of times that they weren't happy about it, but I just found it so hard to buy the idea that they were seeing New Horizon women walking around pregnant and, yet, Waverly never experienced any real angst over it. This was especially incongruous, considering there was so much emphasis on Waverly's marrying young because of her fertility.
As for the youthful marriage, it did not ring at all true to me that Waverly's mother would be so on board with it. I could see if she were a couple of generations removed from the days of marrying later in life, but since she herself had gotten married when she was older, I really thought she should have been a lot more conflicted about the idea of Waverly having to marry and become a mother at such a young age.
Waverly's struggle with Anne Mather is interesting, as is her rather conflicted relationship with Amanda. Still, I didn't think Waverly's mixed feelings about Amanda were developed well enough. It was fine for her to be sort of indifferent on the surface, but there should have been a lot more going on in her head, particularly once Amanda became pregnant.
I think the thing that ultimately turned me off from the novel was the turn it took with regard to religion. First, I had a problem with the New Horizon being termed the "religious" ship when it was so clearly a "Christian" ship. It seemed to me that a situation like that would call for a more diverse representation of the human race (if only in the interest of genetic diversity) and that there should have been more Muslims represented, along with people who were Jewish, Hindu, etc. I get the feeling that the author was sticking with comfortable territory, but the problem is that this makes the world seem unrealistic, which is never a good thing for a novel.
I was also flabbergasted when Kieran suddenly starts preaching away like Anne Mather. I'm not sure if the author's intent is to develop this in later novels, showing the contrast between people who use religion for good and those who use it as an excuse to commit heinous acts. Maybe this is her intention, but it just felt so, so odd to me that the story switches from having a fanatic like Anne Mather to having Kieran use religion as a device for unifying the boys. Um, wasn't this what caused all those problems on the New Horizon? Also, judging by the small clues dropped, such as Waverly's mom saying "yuck" to the idea of a religious wedding, I just could not believe that so many of the boys would jump right on board with Kieran's approach. After all, this was supposed to be a ship full of secular people, which makes me think it likely there'd have been quite a few skeptics on board.
All in all, I was really not impressed with this novel. It had a lot of interesting ideas and themes, but I didn't feel that any of them were very well developed, and I couldn't get past what felt like such inconsistencies. Maybe Ryan will ultimately be able to tie them all together, but I don't plan on reading the other books in the series to find out.