So, you have two books. They both have a heroine who comes from an ancient illustrious family. Said families have always resided in their own dark, creepy, gothic House. There is some sort of evil-ness afoot, and the heroine is going to be the victim. I was really excited to read both of these novels, not only because the covers practically screamed "Oh no!," but also because of the foreboding text on the front and back covers. One book turned out to be amazing. Alas, the other was perhaps the biggest disappointment I've had in a long, long while.
There was just a small blurb on the front and back covers of Darkwater by Catherine Fisher: The front said, "What would you sell your soul for?" and on the back, "From the the New York Times bestselling author of INCARCERON comes a haunting tale of the price we pay for ultimate power." So I am thinking, ooh, this should be scary ... and there is a picture of a stone gargoyle on the cover ... and the book is called Darkwater ... and then I read the blurb inside the book jacket ...
Sixteen-year-old Sarah Trevelyan would give anything to regain the power and wealth her family has lost, so she makes a bargain with Azrael, Lord of Darkwater Hall. He gives her one hundred years and the means to accomplish her objective--in exchange for her soul.
Fast-forward a hundred years to Tom, a fifteen-year-old boy who dreams of attending Darkwater Hall School but doesn't believe he has the talent. Until he meets a professor named Azrael, who offers him a bargain.
Will Sarah be able to stop Tom from making the same mistake she did a century ago? -excerpt from book jacket
Wouldn't you think this book would be good? Wouldn't you - maybe being the kind not to jump to conclusions or make rash judgments - at least hope that it would be good? I mean, it seems promising, doesn't it? Not so, my friend, not so.
This book is divided into two parts. The first is about how the heroine gets into the situation, and the second part takes place after the hundred years have passed. It should have been a good book, but, as I have said, it was a Disappointment (with a capital D in case you didn't catch that). Disappointing not just because it didn't live up to my expectations, but also because the first part of the book held so much promise! I was really into it. The writing was great, the character development moving along nicely, the concept interesting....
But ... the book just falls apart from the minute the second part begins. If the author had put as much effort into writing the second half of the book as she did the first, it would have been excellent. Of course, it would have been probably three times as long as the first part, instead of roughly equal in length, because that is what would have been necessary to develop the story line that was sold to us. Notice, I didn't say develop it well ... I mean develop it at all. Which she didn't. And she could have. And she should have, because it would have been great. But she didn't. Hence, the big disappointment.
Not only does the author not develop the story line in the second half of the book, but she doesn't even develop the characters. In fact, she actually manages to un-develop the heroine. I didn't even know that was possible until I read this book. And, apparently, if you don't develop the characters, it's pretty much impossible to develop any relationship between the two of them. Um, it seemed to me like that was going to be critical to Sarah being able to "stop Tom from making the same mistake she did a century ago."
And then the heroine says stuff like "Because I think I may be the one who killed your brother," at the end of a chapter --- and there is absolutely NO follow-up. Everyone just pretends like it never happened. If the author didn't want to go there, then why did she go there?
The second part of this book reads like the author just said "meh, I'm tired of writing this book." Or like she gave a rough draft to her editor, or however the whole process works, and the editor said, "Hmm, I have better things to do this weekend. You know what, Fisher's other book was a best-seller, so I'm sure this is great," and the whole thing just got approved, even though I could have written something that good in like, a month. Come to think of it, it does read like two different people wrote it.
I could probably go on for another good long while about the things wrong with this book. So I'll just sum it up: Terrible, terrible, terrible. Terrible book, terrible waste, and a terrible shame.
Unless you want to feel cheated, I recommend you don't read it. Or if you do, just read part one and imagine your own conclusion to the story.
Your time will be much more wisely spent if you instead read The Fall by Bethany Griffin. As I said before, I picked this book up because of the cover. It had that great sepia picture and said:
"The House knows everything. The House sees everything, hears everything, knows your every desire and every thought. And the House will never, ever let you go."Then, after reading the inside of the book jacket, I said Yep, this one's a keeper.
Madeline Usher is doomed.
The House of Usher lives and breathes around her. For generations, it has sent every Usher spiraling into madness. It claimed her mother and her father. Now it wants Madeline and her twin brother.
No one can help them. But no one, no other Usher in the generations of their haunted family, has known the house the way Madeline does.
She may finally be the one who can destroy it all. - excerpt from book jacket
Hmm, the House of Usher. I knew that was Edgar Allen Poe, but I couldn't remember ever reading it. I didn't know if it was a poem or short story or a novel (apparently Poe didn't write horror novels). So I found myself a copy of the original short story, and read it before reading the book. Now, the story was okay, if a bit wordy in that 19th century sort of way, and, being a short story, it just gave a sort of outline that one could embellish if they chose to put it into the form of a novel.
I have read several reviews lately written by people who love and/or hate re-tellings of classic novels. I wondered how good this one would be. I must admit that, despite being so psyched to read this, I got a bit worried when I sat down with it in my hands and realized that the reason the author, Bethany Griffin, sounded familiar was because I had read something by her before. That something was mediocre at best, and the second book in the trilogy couldn't keep me invested past the second chapter. Soooo, I actually wondered if I should bother with this one after all. I decided to give it a try, and let me tell you, if I learned one lesson from this book, it's to give an author a second chance, because she totally redeemed herself.
The Fall was a really good remake, maybe because it was working off a short story, and didn't have a whole lot it had to be true to. This allowed the author to throw in a lot of stuff to make a good novel. But it wasn't just the stuff she threw in. It was the way she wrote it as well. The original story by Poe focuses mainly on The House itself, and that is a big part of this book. It is as much a character as the heroine, and the relationship between the house and the girl is written about as if it were the relationship between two people.
The book also manages to somehow stay true to the feeling of Poe's short story by, let me try to find the words to explain this, keeping it somewhat simple. There are the words and thoughts and feelings of the characters, but they read differently that in your typical novel. It's hard to put my finger on exactly how Griffin does it. Maybe it's the short chapters.
Some people hate short chapters. I think they really worked for this book. I might even say they are what made this book so good. Not only are the chapters short, but they skip around in time, making the story a bit disjointed. This serves several purposes. First, it gives the impression that time passes, but that it doesn't really matter because nothing ever really changes except which family member is the current target of the House's curse. Second, the heroine's life itself is disjointed. Things don't really flow. Everything just is, and the house rears its head in fits and bursts. Madeline just exists and waits in the meantime. The Flashback chapters are especially brief, like a memory. They give little hints to explain how the curse works and the reasons behind the decisions Madeline makes. Finally, having short chapters that jump around creates a sense of lost time and confusion, mirroring the way that the heroine loses time in her trances and often has the past and present muddled in her mind.
Another thing people hate is when the author gives little hints about what has and is happening as the story progresses, but never answers all of our questions. Usually this would bother me too, but, curiously, with this novel I found it not to be infuriating. Somehow, I was okay not knowing everything. Maybe because this was a novel based on a short story, and in short stories you never know everything. Maybe because in the grand scheme of things, those little bits and pieces didn't really matter. Maybe because feeling a little bit confused helps us connect with the heroine who is also feeling a little bit confused. I think maybe the author also chose to leave those holes as a way of preparing the reader for the ending, which I at first HATED, but after thinking about it for a few minutes decided wasn't so bad after all and was maybe actually pretty good - in fact possibly the only way she could have ended the story and still stay relatively true to the original.
The more I think about this book, the better I think it is. It's been about two months and ten books since I finished it, so the details are starting to get a bit hazy, but I'm left with the overall impression that this is a book I might like to actually buy. (If you've read my earlier posts, you know what I mean by this.) So if you're looking for a nice creepy story to get in the mood for Halloween, or just because you like to read nice, creepy stories, you should definitely pick up a copy of this one.
Rating: 5 Stars
Reading Level: 4.8
Age Appropriate: Middle Grades
Page Count/Word Count: 70,260
Genre: Horror, Mystery, Paranormal/Supernatural, Thrillers/Suspense
Keywords: Gothic, brothers & sisters, mystery
