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Munro's Kids's Reviews > The Glass Sentence
The Glass Sentence (The Mapmakers Trilogy, #1)
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by
In this first of a series, we enter a world that has been fractured and thrown into different ages and epochs. About a hundred years prior to the events of the novel, the earth split along its fault lines and brought each either backward or forward in time (except for New England which apparently stayed the same). An adolescent girl named Sophia Timms seeks to find out what happened to her parents, explorers who vanished during an expedition. But before she can find the truth, her uncle is kidnapped and Sophia is being hunted by his captors. Along with a boy named Theo, she must travel across Ages to rescue her uncle and find the secret behind a glass map that her pursuers seem desperate to have.
This book was... okay. It was definitely a bit of a grind to get through it. It was advertised as the best world building since Philip Pullman, but I disagree. I think it tried to do too much in one novel, instead of leaving exposition and explanation for the next novels. I was overwhelmed by the sheer amount of telling that the author did. The descriptions were elaborate but not particularly vivid or beautiful. By the end, I had no idea what the setting looked like although there were paragraphs of description. It was just too dense.
Also, the whole dividing of Ages was not quite airtight. I had some questions that were never really answered, and never quite wrapped my head around the whole concept of different times and eras in different places, especially when there can apparently be "a thousand different Agse" in a very small place. How does that even...? How can you have a multitude of technologies and knowledge spanning from the Ice Age to the distant future in a small space and NOT just blend together into a common denominator?
Altogether it was an adventurous read, I suppose, although the first 2/3 of the plot seemed to be "They're chasing us! Whew, we got away. Oh wait, we didn't, they're chasing us! Oh look at that, we got away. Oh wait!" I also found that the author relied a lot of deus ex machina to solve conflict.
All that aside, it's an original idea with some potential, but it might take a very patient reader to sift through it all.
This book was... okay. It was definitely a bit of a grind to get through it. It was advertised as the best world building since Philip Pullman, but I disagree. I think it tried to do too much in one novel, instead of leaving exposition and explanation for the next novels. I was overwhelmed by the sheer amount of telling that the author did. The descriptions were elaborate but not particularly vivid or beautiful. By the end, I had no idea what the setting looked like although there were paragraphs of description. It was just too dense.
Also, the whole dividing of Ages was not quite airtight. I had some questions that were never really answered, and never quite wrapped my head around the whole concept of different times and eras in different places, especially when there can apparently be "a thousand different Agse" in a very small place. How does that even...? How can you have a multitude of technologies and knowledge spanning from the Ice Age to the distant future in a small space and NOT just blend together into a common denominator?
Altogether it was an adventurous read, I suppose, although the first 2/3 of the plot seemed to be "They're chasing us! Whew, we got away. Oh wait, we didn't, they're chasing us! Oh look at that, we got away. Oh wait!" I also found that the author relied a lot of deus ex machina to solve conflict.
All that aside, it's an original idea with some potential, but it might take a very patient reader to sift through it all.
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Reading Progress
Finished Reading
July 2, 2014
– Shelved
July 3, 2014
– Shelved as:
kelsey
October 25, 2014
– Shelved as:
type-middle-grade
