Too Much of a Good Thing

So, I have a friend (who shall remain nameless).  And this friend thinks that if eating four brownies is good, and eight brownies is great, then eating 12 brownies (in one sitting, mind you) must be even better.  So he does.  Eat 12 brownies in one sitting.  Then, an hour later, he wonders why he has a stomachache.  Hmmm.  Maybe because you overdid it on the brownies.  It’s called too much of a good thing, silly.  Because that is a real thing, you know.  Like those extended songs on youtube that my son will periodically listen to.  If the four minute song is so catchy we can’t get enough of it, somehow a ten hour version is just the thing we need!  Ummm, no.  Sometimes more just isn't better.  Sometimes it is a lot, lot worse.

Well, apparently Danielle Paige (and her editor, and agent, and whoever else is responsible for getting a book published) didn’t get the memo, because Stealing Snow is a perfect example of what I’m talking about here.

  

First kisses sometimes wake slumbering princesses, undo spells, and spark happily ever afters.

Mine broke Bale.

Seventeen-year-old Snow has spent her life locked in Whittaker Psychiatric—but she isn’t crazy. And that’s not the worst of it. Her very first kiss proves anything but innocent…when Bale, her only love, turns violent.

Despite Snow knowing that Bale would never truly hurt her, he is taken away—dashing her last hope for any sort of future in the mental ward she calls home. With nowhere else to turn, Snow finds herself drawn to a strange new orderly who whispers secrets in the night about a mysterious past and a kingdom that’s hers for the taking—if only she can find her way past the iron gates to the Tree that has been haunting her dreams.

I liked the concept.  It was different.  A girl is locked in a mental hospital when she is a little girl for trying to walk through a mirror into a magical land.  Only she isn't really crazy, she really can walk through a mirror into a magical land.  The first part of the book, where she is in the mental hospital, was actually pretty good.  I guess that's how I managed to get so far into it (197 pages!) before quitting.  My only real complaint about this part of the story is this:  why, if she is committed at like five years old for trying to walk through a mirror, is she still in there like 12 years later, because sometimes she has anger issues (not because she is delusional, mind you).  What, 12 years of anger management therapy and countless drug trials couldn’t fix the problem well enough to let her out???  That was a pretty stupid premise, but I was like, hey, I can go along with it because we're going to get to the real story pretty soon.  The good part.  Too bad that didn't happen.

This is a story about magic.  And the author must have thought, hey, if a little bit of magic is good, a whole lot of magic is even better.  Well . . . not necessarily, and in this case definitely NOT.

Danielle Page threw in so much magic it just made a mess of the whole story.

Our magical heroine (who just so happens to be the daughter of two different magical types of parents) enters into a magical land through a magical mirror, to rescue the boy she loves (who they haven't yet said is magic, but it's pretty obvious he will turn out to be).  Once there, she falls into a river and is magically revived (because she was dead but that doesn't mean anything if you have magic) by a magical witch who has an apprentice who is not a witch but can magically become a magical cat-beast and is training to control her magic.  The magical apprentice grows magical plants on her free time.  (Who knows why.  The book spends forever describing them for no reason.  They are just there in greenhouses next to the cages that are full of weird animals.)  Then, there is a magical king who uses his ice magic to put a spell on the land, magically making it always winter, and he also makes magic ice animals that attack our heroine, who has to fight them with her own ice magic, which she magically learns how to control in three short lessons with the witch.  Oh, and then there is some guy called The Enforcer or something like that, who wears a suit of armor and can't be stopped, because he's magic, and the king can magically see through his eyes.  He also attacks our heroine, and she has to use, guess what, more magic to fight him.  And then there are people who sell magic potions, and these magic potion sellers cloak themselves with magic to make themselves all beautiful and whatever, and, when they are not in the magical villages selling their magic, they all live together in a magical castle in an illusionary forest created by magic, and they are trying to steal our heroine to use her magic for themselves.  Or something like that.

As if the overload of magic wasn't enough, there is even more wrong with this book:

This book reads like a sketch with a bunch (too, too many at a time) of details thrown in randomly here and there.

The characters are not only not interesting, but they are downright boring.  And annoying.  Especially the one guy who doesn't have any magic (go figure).

The story keeps trying to set up a love triangle (or maybe a quadrangle - there are three guys involved), but it is very, very not well done.  (I can't even begin to describe how bad it is.)  The heroine goes to the magic land to get back Bale, the love of her life.  She keeps telling the witch she has to rescue him.  The thief who lives with the potion making/selling girls keeps popping in and out of the story, telling her that he will help her get Bale back, but she has to come with him first.  There is something about him that she is attracted to.  Or not.  The dude without magic is always angry because he hates magic, but the heroine is sympathetic to him because the cat-girl is his sort-of sister so she understands him.  You can just tell that the author is trying to get them together sooner or later - but what about Bale, the love of her life???)  Uuugggghh.  

The action scenes, well, I guess they are action scenes.  But they are not one little bit suspenseful.  I don't know why exactly.  I didn't realize it was even possible to write an action scene that wasn't action-y until I read this.

What else?  I'm sure that if I made it through the rest of the book I could come up with a half a dozen more complaints, and I am astounded that this is actually a three book series.  

It's a perfect example of a good concept that should have been written by someone else.  Someone who understands that too much of a good thing is not good.  It's just too much.