A review by ileana1
Hollow Earth, by Carole E. Barrowman, John Barrowman
1.0
I've managed to get through 50 pages of this, so take this review with a grain of salt.
There's a few things here that really bothered me. For one, it's written more like a collection of scenes than a novel - generally, if your chapters are a few pages at most (especially if a lot of them are one or two pages long), you're kind of missing a lot of what makes a novel a novel. Mainly, something that makes me like the characters, or care about what's happening, or even UNDERSTAND what is happening. Up to this point, the book is very much trying to make me care by not telling me anything about, well, anything. There's evil people turning up. Oooh, some more evil people over there. And now we've got to run! OR maybe hide! Or do something! Why should I care, when I have no idea what's happening? It felt a lot like a tv episode in a way, where you're meant to be so impressed by the special effects you don't ever stop to ask 'why?'
On top of that, character actions were... weird. Twelve year olds aren't generally idiots. Why would they act the way they do and use abilities no-one else has in a public space with video cameras and the like? And why do parents never ever tell their children vital information, like 'by the way you have powers and there's people who will try to kidnap you so maybe be careful'?
And then we have the actual writing, that jumps wildly between different focalizations. And things like this 'The liquid (coffee) splashed across the desk like dark tears'. End of chapter.
Meh.
There's a few things here that really bothered me. For one, it's written more like a collection of scenes than a novel - generally, if your chapters are a few pages at most (especially if a lot of them are one or two pages long), you're kind of missing a lot of what makes a novel a novel. Mainly, something that makes me like the characters, or care about what's happening, or even UNDERSTAND what is happening. Up to this point, the book is very much trying to make me care by not telling me anything about, well, anything. There's evil people turning up. Oooh, some more evil people over there. And now we've got to run! OR maybe hide! Or do something! Why should I care, when I have no idea what's happening? It felt a lot like a tv episode in a way, where you're meant to be so impressed by the special effects you don't ever stop to ask 'why?'
On top of that, character actions were... weird. Twelve year olds aren't generally idiots. Why would they act the way they do and use abilities no-one else has in a public space with video cameras and the like? And why do parents never ever tell their children vital information, like 'by the way you have powers and there's people who will try to kidnap you so maybe be careful'?
And then we have the actual writing, that jumps wildly between different focalizations. And things like this 'The liquid (coffee) splashed across the desk like dark tears'. End of chapter.
Meh.