Saturday, May 17, 2008

"The Sweet Far Thing" by Libba Bray


The best thing about this book isn't actually the book itself; it's the acknowledgments section at the very beginning written by the author. How sad is that? This also marks the first time I've done two things - I gave up on a book long after I passed the 50 page stopping point, and I found out how it ends by reading some discussion threads on Amazon.

I won't try to bore you with a description of the book, and I won't ruin the ending of it for you if you're so inclined to read it. Suffice to say that it took me over 3 weeks to slog my way to page 321, and the book is 819 pages long. I don't know if the author suddenly thought she needed to describe more of the historical events of that time or not, but there's a lot more exposition about the Spence girls and their debut into society than there is about Gemma, her abilities, and the magic she now holds. I wanted Ms. Bray to get on with the story, but it seems she decided to get bogged down with details.

After I'd made the decision to pretty much give up on this book, I went to Amazon and read quite a few of the reviews there, as well as some of the posts on the discussion threads. As I suspected, this book did not end well ("well" being a subjective term, I know!). As I said, I won't spoil it for anyone else, but I will say that if I had somehow made it to the bitter end, it would've been exactly that - bitter. In a way, I'm glad I gave up. I'd rather remember the enchantment of the first two books in this series than go and spoil all that with the ending of this installment.

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