I was excited to read this book, because it would be one of the rare times that I read it via the audiobook format. I knew there was more of a chance I was excited to read this book, because it would be one of the rare times that I read it via the audiobook format. I knew there was more of a chance of me finishing the read through listening to the very professional Juliet Stevenson. I can't really decimate this book bit by bit. I can't take it up to be verbose, snarky, and varied.
So I'll be brief and move on to the next read, to which I am already looking forward to. After this book, the only way is up. But my foray into YA Fantasy is not over. I want to read at least a couple of good books, lest I become bitter, unconnected with the spirit of the times, and lackadaisical.
I don't recognise many of my friends's adoration and fondness for this book. Maybe it is a YA thing, maybe it is a feminine thing. But things don't compute. People who react somewhat similarly to me, roughly so, lose their collective minds over this series, and this author, Maas. This book was jaw-droppingly of poor quality, for me at least.
I'm having difficulty in formulating the traumatic experience. My ears kind of glazed over. The professional narration, instead of fixing things, aggravated them. Stevenson meant every word that she read. The words jarred with the voice's tone. The material of the book felt so fake, and so devoid of creativity. These are immortals? These characters?
The same problem that I had with Kevin Hearne's Urban Fantasy series was apparent here. Why do even experienced women readers like this. Maybe the young and the old need the romance factor to appease them. But at what cost! At what cost, in all things holy.
The banter was extremely unfunny. Every time I listened to one 'joke', my mind came up with a better one. And that was me relaxing, or trying to, and being passively submissive to the experience. I came up with jokes that was better than those of one of the best YA authors around. I couldn't believe what was happening.
I am giving it the one star that I expected it to receive. But I thought I have seen everything with book 1. I was wrong. I will read book 3. I am hypnotised by the crap spouting out of a narrator's voice in my ear, me wishing that I was listening to some rap music or country music instead. I don't see the younger readers go against this in their later years, unlike the tacky fashion sense that always accompanies most teenagers's lives. Because... their mothers and grandmothers like the same thing.
The speed at which the eroticism began happened faster than most porn videos. Porn these days are getting too plot-centric. They ought to take a leaf out of this series. If a boring work of art is so numbing that it becomes obscene, then I guess I will almost never find favor with a single one of these bleeding books. It was not for me, my mind says. This deserves to be the only rightly banned book among the 1600 ones that have been banned in the last 9 months in schools. My heart says....more
If I was stingy with my ratings in the past, now I seem frivolous. For this 4th tome of the Famous Five series has no redeeming factors. It is very trIf I was stingy with my ratings in the past, now I seem frivolous. For this 4th tome of the Famous Five series has no redeeming factors. It is very trite. For an adventure that is aimed towards preteens and teens, but part of a series that sometimes charms even adults, this book belies the goodwill of the author, Enid Blyton.
I think only the accumulation of new words in French prevented me from giving the book one star. For a middle grade book, the vocab is different from its original. Transferring from English -pound - to French - franc - the book seemed to have gained in currency. The language employed is more than the dry utilitarianism of the original.
This is the 4th book in the series. The first 3 are much better. I rate them thus :- 2nd, 1st, 3rd. Then we have this one, which is a marked departure from the usualness of the series. The adventure fails on all fronts.
The joyousness of the children? Gone. The cheerfulness of the tone. Vamoosed. The carefreeness of the plot. Ditto. The villain was someone that illustrated the problems of the book perfectly. He has no time to shine. He is a pantomime villain, but someone who is without right or reason. He poses as a master criminal with fleets of smuggling boats at his beck and call, yet wets his digits in the crime he masterminds.
The cheap and unsurprising ploy to conjure up mystery falls flat on its factualless face. This book has no sword to fall on it, but it manages to impale itself on the sharp demands of reason that ought to underpin any venture in writing.
Maybe Enid Blyton or one of her countless ghostwriters thought to borrow somewhat from gothic tales. Maybe she wanted to imitate Poe among all people. We will never know. Good. The less we know about the intricacies of this book the better. Which is why you see me not rehashing any part of the stories. I'm merely here to warn off would be readers to either avoid this book, or to lower their expectations to ankle level.
Both children and adults have no arc in this book. There is just a clumsy collage of scenes that look pathetic to the eye. The smugglers, the hosts, the victims of kidnapping, all of them seem to lug no pulse in them, and no brain activity whatsoever. Given that there seems to be two of the brightest minds in science under that sinister and lugubrious roof, God help us what lesser mortals act like in that murky and brownish grey universe.
To cap it all - get it? Capital? - the setting and the actors and the prose and the narration and the plot are all grey. The best Famous Five books have the exciting locale of a Western. This book looks like a The Hangover 2 in terms of cinematics. Maybe I'm the only person alive to compare Kirrin - or here Kernach - island to Vegas, but anyone who lives on an island or reads about them can understand my point. Islands are solitary as Sherlock Holmes, all over the place like a Diva gone old, exciting like a heist movie, and fresh like the newly fallen rain.
But here the solitariness of the book is dull as grain. I have no idea why I am writing so much about a book that I disdain, but sometimes muses have minds of their own. Do not read this book without preparing for it. Do not expect all Famous Five books to be created equal, for some are moreso than others. This book ought not to have seen the light of the day.
The worst thing that Enid Blyton has done to her bestselling Famous Five Series is to have all books be stand alone. There are no consequences. There are no hurts to nurture, no knowledge to wise up the mind, 4 minds that are budding and learning at every step. In more capable hands this book series ought to appear fairy tales like. But fairy tales, even Christian ones, are pagan in nature. The straight up middle class and outdated ethos of the Famous Five clash horribly with the spirt of folk tales. Anyway I could go on and on, but you get the picture. Try Five on Finniston Farm rather. But this book is best left forgotten....more
Reading Martin Chuzzlewit - a book that I've been reading simultaneously with House of Earth and Blood - is like reading, well Dickens. Reading Sarah Reading Martin Chuzzlewit - a book that I've been reading simultaneously with House of Earth and Blood - is like reading, well Dickens. Reading Sarah J. Maas is like eating a wallpaper and then going back for the glue. This book is vile.
There was not one thing in this book that indicated good growth and benevolence. There was not one thing in this vile book that hazarded one to look at it benignantly. I can never endorse this shit book. How are the 30 year olds reading the book holding up? Where is the furor about such chasm-like drift in quality.
Is this what the YA crowd, and the too long in the tooth YA crowds hailing as a great book? This is infamy. This is treason against reason. This is intellectual suicide. How is it that Mr Rogers's Neighborhood has more maturity than Sarah J. Maas's lurid creation? How is it that Noddy, Goldorak, and Ronin Wariors and La Linea all have more gumption than HoEaB? This book is a kind of bubblegum crisis. That's what it is. I wish.
I fell at the last hurdle. Completed most of the book. I had to rub my eyes at the last 'act'. This is the type of book to give the snobs power. Else what choice there is? Is it fatally certain that the choice for a parent to suffer her child read this shit book, or engage her in the competitive world of ballet and piano playing, and tough hurdles like martial arts class.
There is only one book that comes close to matching the execrable quality of HoEaB, and that is The Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Clare. Objectivity won't do. If I had a time machine I would rescue all the books Hitler was burning and fuel those blazes with every single book this copycat, cynical, laughing-all-the-way-to-the-bank author has written....more
Luffy Sempai
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