There is nothing terribly wrong with book 84 — although I question the villain’s abilities both in the deeds performed and the ways others react to the evil plans since it seems that once the young heroes got on the case, all of those supports evaporated instantly… without really good reasons for those other powerful adults to change their minds so readily. I also question the total disregard of reality: although this is a fantasy story set in our current days, the “magic” does not seem to ground itself in any shape or form to the real science of the events. There must be ways to marry the two but the author either couldn’t do it, or didn’t bother to figure out clever ways to convince me.
However… my not so favorable reaction to the book really comes down to a stylistic one. The author has a liking of describing almost all details with more ways than one. I’m making up a description here:
The cat was licking herself calmly, as if the menacing dog was not staring at her, as if the dog’s eyes weren’t bulging, as if the dog’s mouth was not already started to slobber, and as if it was not making a low growling sound in its throat.
I get it — the dog is menacing the cat and the cat remains calm… I get it… the author NEEDS to describe each scene in painstaking details so the I the reader can “visualize” the whole scene. The thing is: actually, when I see certain words, such as menacing or bulging eyes, I am already filling in a lot of the rest of the scene in my mind and unless the rest of the scene contradicts what normally happens, what the author does here actually slows down the pacing and hinders the continuing “image playback” in the this reader’s mind. I got so annoyed by the redundant descriptions of all the small details that I finally had to scan about 1/3 of the book to get to the end. But perhaps some other people actually like these details and find them fun and satisfying.
Fairrosa Cyber Library 