Another year, another Fall Book Season. This one was
slightly less exciting for me, since there were only two automatic-preorders
for me, but I thought that I might as well review them since hey! I have my own
website!
So here is the first:
I should probably say off the bat that while I like Scott
Westerfeld, I prefer his books that’s aren’t quite a real-world-y (think Uglies
and Leviathan over So Yesterday). However, Afterworlds promised to be both at
once. A young writer who is muddling through the publishing world (the Darcy
story), and her book about the afterworld (the Lizzie story)? It sounded like a
good mixture.
A common criticism of this book is that the two sides are
weak and need each other. That is true; you cannot skip the Darcy chapters and
just read the Lizzie chapters, or vice versa. Neither book felt fleshed out,
particularly Lizzie’s story. The ending fell flat (which was admittedly a
plot-point on the Darcy side), and the climax seemed to be very scattered.
There was no clear endgame to the story, which means for the last four or five
chapters I felt like the book was about to end only to discover more plot.
Meanwhile, the opposite happened on the Darcy side. The
ending felt completely rushed. After all this time going through the process of
revising, the final six months of Darcy’s story was put into just a few
chapters. Darcy’s story, which was supposed to be about publishing a novel, was
actually a romance. If you take out Imogen, how much Darcy is left? Darcy’s
story isn’t about publishing; it’s about falling in love and coming out. It is
a shame since there were so many ways Darcy’s story could have been told. She
could have had a life without Imogen, but instead that is pushed into the
background.
This all being said, though, the balance of the two stories
was done well. The chapters were short enough that one didn’t get so lost in
one story to forget the other. The two characters were not dealing with
heartache or parental issues at the same time, which would feel forced. The
plots were also different enough that the stories did not get confusing. One
did not get details of Lizzie’s or Darcy’s lives confused, possibly because one
story is in first person and the other is in third. The two stories were
separate, and yet worked well together.
So overall? I think I enjoyed Afterworlds. It has been
almost two weeks and I can’t say for certain one way or the other, which is
probably indicative of the problems with the book. I want to hear more about
Darcy, but I do not really need to read Untitled Patel (Darcy’s phrase for
Lizzie’s sequel). And would it be worth reading Untitled Patel to get more
Darcy? I would do so, but I am not enthusiastic. So Afterworlds was a
disappointment, when all is said and done. I think.
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