Date: Apr. 28th, 2017 01:09 am (UTC)
sholio: sun on winter trees (0)
From: [personal profile] sholio
To be honest, I've never read this because of EXACTLY the thing you discuss with the ending. I wasn't 100% sure about it 'til reading your review that it actually does end that way, but that basically confirms everything that had made me stay away from the book. I would have been all over a book that was about struggling with the disillusionment of losing your fantasy world and learning how to deal with a flawed life here (the story of Susan from Narnia, basically), but everything I've seen in the book's advertising suggested to me that it was going to end up being the exact opposite of what I want, and yeppppp.

... I think the big thing is that I simply can't relate to the book's central conceit; even when I was a kid, I never had the feeling which apparently, I gather from the way other people have reacted to the book, that is evidently common, that children are losing something vital if they can't go back to their fantasy portal world as adults. I always found fantasy worlds fun to visit but not places I wanted to live in. I mean, not that anyone is wrong to feel this way; it's just that the whole concept of "children have to give up magic to become adults, and this is bad" was something that had never even occurred to me as a possible reading of that trope, until talking to other fantasy readers as an adult. I think it's mainly that to me, fantasy lands full of talking animals, where the rules were all different, were something that I found much more terrifying and uncertain than the real world, and as much as I loved reading fantasy, I also preferred the devil I knew to the even worse devil I didn't. So I'm obviously not the target audience for the book -- I'm probably more like the character mentioned in the review you linked to who can't go back to her fantasy world because she can't tolerate the high entropy of that world any more.

I do find the reviewer's comment in the review you linked to that 17-18 is too old for YA protagonist kind of puzzling, because I've read tons of YA with characters that age. Maybe they're thinking of middle grade?
(will be screened)
(will be screened if not validated)
If you don't have an account you can create one now.
HTML doesn't work in the subject.
More info about formatting

If you are unable to use this captcha for any reason, please contact us by email at support@dreamwidth.org

Tags

Style Credit