Customer Reviews

Into the Labyrinth

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

After reading and loving "A Great Good Thing," I was hoping for this sequel to be as well-written and charming. I was disappointed. It features the same wonderful characters, princess Sylvie and the "girl with the dark blue eyes," as well as the king and queen and all the other characters, but the plot doesn't hold together nearly as well. The author inserts a new character -- a yoga instructor named Rosetta-- into "the story" as an assistant shepherdess, and all the talk of energy projection lines and finding one's center is way above the heads of its 9-12 audience.

Instead of books and their readers, it tackles the problem of the Internet and its viewers -- that is, "the story" is published online. Instead of a little brother who is a pyromaniac and destroys the book in "A Great Good Thing," it seems to deal with a boy who spreads computer viruses -- but this part isn't very clear.

The story borders more on the zany type of puns and Alice-in Wonderland type plot, -- than than the clever, funny and fantastic but logical and believeable plot devices of the original. Characters from other stories wander into the text. Internet "cookies" look like lemon cookies, but are tasteless. Someone steals the "d's" in one paragraph. Entire lines of dialouge disappear, arrows become roses. Persumably all these thing happen due to a computer virus -- but there is no clear character behind or logical reason for the problems. The book suggests a little boy is to blame, but unlike the clear difficulties in the first book -- escaping a burning book and not being forgotten upon the death of the reader -- the villian is murky and there is not a logical direction to the problems. The mysterious villian is defeated eventually -- but you never do learn how or why the virus happened. And by the end of the book, you don't particulary care.

Although the first book, The Great Good Thing, may have been better in some ways, this was still quite a good book! All the same characters from the first book are here plus new people. The usual characters continue in their roles in this book and do more and more. In Into the Labyrinth, the Writer puts Sylvie's story on the Internet. That's when their story gets a virus.
Just as they start getting used to climbing down the page, instead of across as in a book, they find that for some strange reason letters go missing, and words get mixed up. When Sylvie learns what a virus is from a friend and finds a way outside of the story, she becomes determined to solve the problem.
Into the Labyrinth is a creative, imaginative book!

First I must say Roderick Townley is a writing genius. However this is not his best work. In the first one he still doesn't make it completly understandable. In this one I think he isn't quite staying in the same place first one. I think he lose's topic a bit too much and tries to make it better than the first one. He fails in the attempt. I would recommend the book just don't expect a movie anytime soon.