A review by adaralynne
Hang Wire by Adam Christopher
2.0
Do you remember track and field in elementary school; particularly the high jump? They'd set the bar low at first and as you got better, the bar was raised until you were able to fly a good 3-4 feet backwards into the air and over the bar without knocking it down. And sometimes there were the poor kids that just weren't cut out for the sport; who couldn't quite get the height required to clear the mat, much less the bar, and would end up diving under it rather than over it in a noble attempt to reach their classmates' level. Hang Wire is one of those kids. It set its bar high and missed it on every mark but it gave it its all.
This book tried so hard to be good that it almost tried too hard in many cases. There was something about the construction of sentences and placement of words that made what would normally be very climactic and exciting scenes seem incredibly dull and unfulfilling. I was often left with a feeling of empty emotion; holes that were expecting to be filled with a good climax but weren't. Quite often the things that should have had the largest impact on me as a reader just slid on by with a gentle tap that leaves the story, as a whole, lacking. Consequentially, the ending was an absolute trudge and the story lost me completely at the arrival of... Belenus. (Not to mention the many spelling and grammar errors throughout the book; there were many times I actually had to reword a sentence in my head for the paragraph to make sense.)
It's very rare that I read a book and not care about any of the characters in the story. Generally speaking, there is usually at least one character that I attach myself to. This book didn't have that. It wasn't that the characters were particularly unlikable, the story just didn't make me care about them at all. The closest I got to caring about a character was my interest in Joel's story, but that interest was shattered with what you might call the 'climax' of the book, (really, I hated that entire final ordeal). Much of this, I think, is thanks to the way the characters were written. Kanaloa, for example. It felt like the author was attempting to hold the reader's hand the entire way through the book on who certain characters are, what they feel about the current situation, and what certain things would mean for the future of that character. Information was repeated constantly - yes, yes, we KNOW Kanaloa is super powerful and cannot, ever, lose control or else bad things will happen. We don't need to be told this every other page the character is present on.
This isn't to say I didn't enjoy the book. The story was intriguing, (as said earlier, the construction of the circus was one of my favourite parts), I simply feel like the book tried too hard to be bigger than it was. It was an exhausting read for this reason alone.
This book tried so hard to be good that it almost tried too hard in many cases. There was something about the construction of sentences and placement of words that made what would normally be very climactic and exciting scenes seem incredibly dull and unfulfilling. I was often left with a feeling of empty emotion; holes that were expecting to be filled with a good climax but weren't. Quite often the things that should have had the largest impact on me as a reader just slid on by with a gentle tap that leaves the story, as a whole, lacking. Consequentially, the ending was an absolute trudge and the story lost me completely at the arrival of... Belenus. (Not to mention the many spelling and grammar errors throughout the book; there were many times I actually had to reword a sentence in my head for the paragraph to make sense.)
It's very rare that I read a book and not care about any of the characters in the story. Generally speaking, there is usually at least one character that I attach myself to. This book didn't have that. It wasn't that the characters were particularly unlikable, the story just didn't make me care about them at all. The closest I got to caring about a character was my interest in Joel's story, but that interest was shattered with what you might call the 'climax' of the book, (really, I hated that entire final ordeal). Much of this, I think, is thanks to the way the characters were written. Kanaloa, for example. It felt like the author was attempting to hold the reader's hand the entire way through the book on who certain characters are, what they feel about the current situation, and what certain things would mean for the future of that character. Information was repeated constantly - yes, yes, we KNOW Kanaloa is super powerful and cannot, ever, lose control or else bad things will happen. We don't need to be told this every other page the character is present on.
This isn't to say I didn't enjoy the book. The story was intriguing, (as said earlier, the construction of the circus was one of my favourite parts), I simply feel like the book tried too hard to be bigger than it was. It was an exhausting read for this reason alone.