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Doyle's Reviews > The Night Gardener
The Night Gardener
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Auxier's debut book Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes is one of my favorites, so I was pretty anxious to read his next book. It's possible that my expectations for this book were unreasonable, but overall I was pretty thoroughly underwhelmed with The Night Gardner. Where Peter Nimble incorporated several of my favorite aspects of young adult literature (road-trip style fantasy adventure with magical items, plenty of characters who become important later in the story, and plenty of twists), The Night Gardner repeatedly failed to hold my interest.
This haunted house story is about 100 pages too long. The first 2/3rds of the book (260 pages) set up the mood and introduce the characters, of which there are only 10 (and at least 1 is of no consequence to the story). There weren't enough surprises in this chunk for my taste, and I felt like it could have been more entertaining if done in fewer pages. Some of the characters were not fleshed out very well, and the motivations for some of the characters to stay at the haunted house were questionable.
Going in to the third act I thought we might finally start to delve into some of the mysteries that had been hinted at up to this point. It is suggested that the curse had affected previous generations of the occupying family, and wouldn't it be neat if some element from these past generations came to play a role in the current story? This is something that is done well in the Locke & Key series. But no, we're stuck firmly in the present. There is also a question of some certain missing people, and wouldn't it be neat if their fates turned out to be anything-but-the-completely-obvious-answer that every reader will assume from the beginning? Sigh.
And I know it isn't fair to keep comparing this to Auxier's previous hit, but Peter Nimble had beautiful chapter head illustrations. Night Gardner had the same design for the first page of each chapter repeated over and over again. I'll still read Auxier's next book, but I probably won't pick up Night Gardner for a re-read anytime in the foreseeable future.
This haunted house story is about 100 pages too long. The first 2/3rds of the book (260 pages) set up the mood and introduce the characters, of which there are only 10 (and at least 1 is of no consequence to the story). There weren't enough surprises in this chunk for my taste, and I felt like it could have been more entertaining if done in fewer pages. Some of the characters were not fleshed out very well, and the motivations for some of the characters to stay at the haunted house were questionable.
Going in to the third act I thought we might finally start to delve into some of the mysteries that had been hinted at up to this point. It is suggested that the curse had affected previous generations of the occupying family, and wouldn't it be neat if some element from these past generations came to play a role in the current story? This is something that is done well in the Locke & Key series. But no, we're stuck firmly in the present. There is also a question of some certain missing people, and wouldn't it be neat if their fates turned out to be anything-but-the-completely-obvious-answer that every reader will assume from the beginning? Sigh.
And I know it isn't fair to keep comparing this to Auxier's previous hit, but Peter Nimble had beautiful chapter head illustrations. Night Gardner had the same design for the first page of each chapter repeated over and over again. I'll still read Auxier's next book, but I probably won't pick up Night Gardner for a re-read anytime in the foreseeable future.
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Reading Progress
May 21, 2014
–
Started Reading
May 21, 2014
– Shelved
June 1, 2014
–
Finished Reading
June 2, 2014
– Shelved as:
young-adult
