Wednesday, January 06, 2010

A small rant on my current book

the knife of never letting go I’m currently reading The Knife of Never Letting Go, a YA book that received a lot of acclaim around the blogsphere last year. I think it deserves that acclaim because I’m enjoying so far.

You can here the but coming, can’t you?

BUT…

I find it incredibly frustrating when characters have some useful and important information which they don't tell me, the reader, in order to stretch out the mystery. This is done here - Todd learns what's the big thing about becoming a man that Ben and Cillian are trying to protect him from quite early. But several chapters on, I still don't know and it annoys me. Not enough to stop me reading, but it niggles at the back of my mind. It makes me feel like I'm being cheated or played with.

Since it already seems that there are two mysteries - the manhood one and the here's a girl one - why not focus on the unexpected one Todd doesn't know anything about and let me know what he knows that I don't. Stop mucking me around because you're just pissing me off. I already know that no matter how good this book is, it won't be getting 10/10 because of this.

This is a personal thing, I acknowledge that, but I really, really annoys me. I read one of Kathy Reich’s Temperance Brennan books and the only thing I remember is that Tempe solved one of the mysteries early and I had to wait until the end of the book to find out what the answer was. And she kept on referring to it without telling me what she was referring to. Aaaaarrrrrgggghhhhhh.

3 comments:

orannia said...

OK, that's annoying! I know absolutely nothing about this book, so I look forward to hearing all about it from you at some point :)

Kerry said...

It was a very good book that I highly recommend. And the revelation when it came was well done and appropriate. It's just that that particular technique annoys me. And by the time we got to the revelations (there were two) I'd figured them out. But it was a niggle, not a book killer. The book really was a great read. I think I'm going to buy the second one if I can find it locally as I don't think I can wait through 12 library holds on 2 copies of the book to get my grubby little mits on it.

orannia said...

Well, that's a recommendation :) I wonder if Auckland City Libraries has it... *races off to check*