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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Quick, satisfying read,
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This review is from: Strange Evil (Mass Market Paperback)
Well That ole China Mieville is a strange duck. He chose this novel for a Gaurdian list of the top ten weird fiction books he'd come across which is how I picked it up. He stressed, as did the publisher in the preface, that this was written by a fourteen year old, and frankly that made the reading experience. I wasn't a trillionth this aware as a freshman in highschool, and though Judith, the artist's model from London who gets kidnapped by her fairy cousin to another dimension, does some awfully silly things- there's simply a thrill from reading the work of a mind just hovering around the brink of total self awareness. The truth is I've read much, MUCH worse science fiction and fantasy in my day.
True in this novel there's lots of semi-tedious descriptive passages of exotic birds, green leaves, butterfly covered fields, and long and winding passages. And its true there's one too many characters with the letter "z" in their name, and the sexy fairy who captures Judith's heart is a palindrome for Jane Gaskell's first name. True that the heroine experiences less a state of wonder at discovering her cousin is a faerie than she is concerned with female rivalry with her. And also true that there are charming lapses in narrative priority- Judith discovers that many are dieing around her but she doesn't let that get her down- no she goes and takes a nap in another beautiful glade. But that's part of this work's charm. Every time the characters start talking it's very entertaining- the book takes on topics of promiscuity amongst the aristocracy, social welfare amongst satyrs and faeries, and the ever dangerous Baby Worship. But when the plot revolves around a war for access to a crystal meth-esque substance that sustains life how can you go wrong with such a work? And the climax is TO-DIE-FOR. So yes, read this if you come across an out of print edition somewhere. It makes me want to read more books by teenagers. It was utterly charming.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Strange, weird, imaginative, but written by a 14-year-old and it shows,
By David "I read science fiction and fantasy, bu... (LAUREL, MD, United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Strange Evil (Mass Market Paperback)
This is a strange and imaginative book about an Earth woman from London who is sort-of abducted by cousins from another world. She is taken to a fairyland full of satyrs and giants and faerie-like humans, and finds herself caught in the middle of a war between those who live inside the magical mountain that is the source of the faerie beings' immortality, and those who have been exiled to the outside.
This book was written by the author when she was fourteen. They decided to publish it on the strength of her storytelling and her imagination; it wasn't on the strength of her writing, which is quite immature and often just plain ungrammatical. It takes a while for the story to go anywhere and there is a lot of irrelevant description, but there is an imaginative story and some sparkle of brilliance buried beneath the adolescent purple prose. I want to give it a higher rating, taking into account the fact that it was written by a fourteen-year-old, but objectively, it's not a great fantasy novel and not really that original, and it's marred by the poor writing. If I were judging it relative to, say, NaNoWriMo novels and other output from teenagers and amateurs, I'd give it a higher rating, but compared with professional published fiction, it just doesn't have that much to commend it aside from the novelty of having been written by a kid.
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