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A review by anna_wa
The Isle of the Lost by Melissa de la Cruz
3.0
When I first got this series at an extremely discounted rate, I thought I had struck gold. I love Descendants and I couldn't wait to read the books that inspired them.
Well... when I started reading, I realized it wasn't going to be like the movies. Evie and Mal aren't best friends and, in fact, in the very beginning of the book, Mal has dreams of happy enacting suffering on Evie. And Carlos isn't part of The Crew at all until later on - though he's great at his Weird Science class.
But that's fine though, because books are almost never like the movies. I can enjoy the Descendants movies and also this book series, right?
Mmm... I didn't hate this book, but I also didn't love it. It felt like everything worked out /too/ perfectly on their mission. There was way too many Deus Ex Machina going on here to be believable.
Deus Ex Machina, as defined by TVTropes, is "when some new event, character, ability, or object solves a seemingly unsolvable problem in a sudden, unexpected way". Which can work, sometimes... but in this particular book, the author utilizes that trope so much that it is simply no longer interesting. The mission feels too easy, even with the traps. I didn't ever really feel convinced that the characters were in peril and weren't going to get out...
And also: So. much. shrugging. How did no editor notice how much shrugging there was? The author surely could've mixed it up with another verb SOMEWHERE.
Having said all this though, I really liked the ending and the characters (even though they are different from the characters in the movies). And I'm gonna keep reading, at least until I finish the sequel. Because I want to know what happens next.
Well... when I started reading, I realized it wasn't going to be like the movies. Evie and Mal aren't best friends and, in fact, in the very beginning of the book, Mal has dreams of happy enacting suffering on Evie. And Carlos isn't part of The Crew at all until later on - though he's great at his Weird Science class.
But that's fine though, because books are almost never like the movies. I can enjoy the Descendants movies and also this book series, right?
Mmm... I didn't hate this book, but I also didn't love it. It felt like everything worked out /too/ perfectly on their mission. There was way too many Deus Ex Machina going on here to be believable.
Deus Ex Machina, as defined by TVTropes, is "when some new event, character, ability, or object solves a seemingly unsolvable problem in a sudden, unexpected way". Which can work, sometimes... but in this particular book, the author utilizes that trope so much that it is simply no longer interesting. The mission feels too easy, even with the traps. I didn't ever really feel convinced that the characters were in peril and weren't going to get out...
And also: So. much. shrugging. How did no editor notice how much shrugging there was? The author surely could've mixed it up with another verb SOMEWHERE.
Having said all this though, I really liked the ending and the characters (even though they are different from the characters in the movies). And I'm gonna keep reading, at least until I finish the sequel. Because I want to know what happens next.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Emotional abuse