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How to Ditch Your Fairy by Justine Larbalestier
I had several major problems with this book.
My first problem occurred on page one in the first sentence. Spoffs? What the heck are spoffs? Every time I thought I could get into the book the language was a turn-off. Normally I have no problem adjusting to whatever strange and various words and/or names authors make up to cover vague or alien concepts. But most of the concepts in this book (while sometimes vague) were not exactly alien. Spoffs refers to breasts I finally found out about three paragraphs in (at which point I had to return to the beginning and recapture what I'd lost making the story seem choppier than it should have. The words she used may have been British or Australian slang but were so unfamiliar to me in the context that they were used that they might as well have been made up.
My second major problem was the depth of the characters. They were all amazingly shallow. The main character doesn't want or see value in her parking fairy merely because she's not old enough to drive yet. Her immaturity could have dissipated throughout the book but didn't. I'm not sure any of the characters made any kind of lasting impression on each other either except maybe with the poor girl whose name really IS stupidly long...
The school that the kids attended was also a point of distraction for me. Who would elect to go to school for 10 hours a day for 6 days a week? Even if you do love sports that length seems a tad extremist and should probably be checked out by a therapist. Their tight rule system, while intended to instill discipline in the children, only seemed to make them anal retentive (as evidenced by the growing list at the beginning of each chapter, which incidentally was the only thing keeping me turning the pages).
All in all this book was a disappointment for me since I was so interested in the concept to start. *sigh*
How to Ditch Your Fairy by Justine Larbalestier
I had several major problems with this book.
My first problem occurred on page one in the first sentence. Spoffs? What the heck are spoffs? Every time I thought I could get into the book the language was a turn-off. Normally I have no problem adjusting to whatever strange and various words and/or names authors make up to cover vague or alien concepts. But most of the concepts in this book (while sometimes vague) were not exactly alien. Spoffs refers to breasts I finally found out about three paragraphs in (at which point I had to return to the beginning and recapture what I'd lost making the story seem choppier than it should have. The words she used may have been British or Australian slang but were so unfamiliar to me in the context that they were used that they might as well have been made up.
My second major problem was the depth of the characters. They were all amazingly shallow. The main character doesn't want or see value in her parking fairy merely because she's not old enough to drive yet. Her immaturity could have dissipated throughout the book but didn't. I'm not sure any of the characters made any kind of lasting impression on each other either except maybe with the poor girl whose name really IS stupidly long...
The school that the kids attended was also a point of distraction for me. Who would elect to go to school for 10 hours a day for 6 days a week? Even if you do love sports that length seems a tad extremist and should probably be checked out by a therapist. Their tight rule system, while intended to instill discipline in the children, only seemed to make them anal retentive (as evidenced by the growing list at the beginning of each chapter, which incidentally was the only thing keeping me turning the pages).
All in all this book was a disappointment for me since I was so interested in the concept to start. *sigh*
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