Customer Reviews

The Walls Have Eyes

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Unfortunately, this book is a real stinker. I had to force myself to finish it, and now I'm annoyed that I wasted two hours of my life. Yes, it's that bad! Clare Dunkle is a very talented writer, so for the life of me I can't figure out where this novel went so terribly wrong. The plot is confusing and the characters two-dimensional, flat, and boring. Sorry Dunkle!

"The Walls Have Eyes" is the sequel to Dunkle's first sci-fi story, The Sky Inside. It continues the tale of Martin, and his quest to find out the truth about his utopian society and find his own place in it. His family have become the targets of a government conspiracy, and it's up to Martin to save them from their own ignorance. More is revealed in this sequel about the behind-the-scenes dirty workings of the government; Cassie and the Wonder Babies are still in the crosshairs and not as safe as they seem. Martin has to make a terrible and formative choice about what matters most, but I don't want to say more for fear of spoiling it. Big Questions are explored, including the ethics of genetic card-stacking, authoritarianism, invasion of privacy and restriction of freedom for the sake of security, individual rights, and self-sacrifice for the good of the whole. The problem for me was that these questions are posed against the framework of a plot that seems not so much driven by the characters as by a stack of cue cards. In other words, the characters seem to have been given less freedom to be individuals by their author, than they were by their government, and as such, they failed to involve me in their problems. Still, this story has a good theme, clean content, a really cool robo-dog, and will very likely appeal to readers in the 11-14 bracket who appreciate sci-fi.

Clare Dunkle has written two of my favorite YA books, "The Hollow Kingdom" and "By These Ten Bones", and I really wanted to like this book, but I had to force myself to finish it. I ended up skimming the last third of it, wanting it to be over already. The story drags as the characters behave in the most oddly disaffected manner under what should be tense circumstances, to say the least. The characters often sound as though they're reading a script, and unenthusiastically, at that. I'm really glad that not everyone agrees with this assesment of "The Walls Have Eyes" (see review by J. Stephens, above) but in case you're drawn to the book by the rave review, only to find it as I did, I want to say, please don't discount this author's other stories because of weaknesses in this one!

I finished this book at lunch today and was thrilled with it. It has layers, and can easily be read by the intended audience (young readers) and adults. Fast paced adventure with plenty of twists and turns, yet much food for thought for older teens and adults. Why would someone leave a perfectly good, safe, boring bubble world? What are the ethics behind genetic manipulation? What are the psychic costs to society to attempt to perfect humans? And why are the government agents clones?

Thumbs up!