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The Crystal Keeper by James Jauncey. 245 pages
Fairly standard YA fantasy. A young girl named Sammie if summoned into a fantasy realm to save the inhabitants of an enchanted valley.
There's not a huge amount to say about this one really. I wanted something light and easily digestible to read and this fit the bill pretty well. Readable enough but nothing outstanding.
The only thing that struck me after I'd finished it was that the situation that Sammie was called in to remedy was a direct consequence of a practice for which there was no particularly obvious reason, and could easily have been avoided with a bit of sensible planning.
Fairly standard YA fantasy. A young girl named Sammie if summoned into a fantasy realm to save the inhabitants of an enchanted valley.
There's not a huge amount to say about this one really. I wanted something light and easily digestible to read and this fit the bill pretty well. Readable enough but nothing outstanding.
The only thing that struck me after I'd finished it was that the situation that Sammie was called in to remedy was a direct consequence of a practice for which there was no particularly obvious reason, and could easily have been avoided with a bit of sensible planning.
calm
Sometimes I tell you that you are full of common sense and you tell me that you're not. Here is a sentence that proves that I am right. Just listen to yourself. This portion of your review made me chuckle so deeply - it's SO like the you that you reveal here on LJ.
If people always sensibly planned, there would be no fiction. There's always somebody screwing up something in fiction, whether in romance, their work lives, or just generally. It's almost the whole point of fiction - what people do, the consequences of what they do, and how they get out of or further into those consequences. /rant
I love reading YA fiction more than just about anything, BTW.
It's all hindsight though, that's the trouble :-) Besides, it's far easier to spot where other people are going wrong than where you're going wrong yourself :-)
Well, there's some truth in that of course :-) But the trick is to make the screwups believable and this one fell just on the wrong side of that line for me. Basically the whole situation arises because someone is sent off to do a job wherein they see no-one else for a year at a time. it's an honored job, so there's no reason why they couldn't have a servant or visitors to keep them company. Or even write letters to people. But no. they have o be alone, all the time. That strikes me as a prime example of an Idiot Plot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiot_plot)
I think part of the reason I was so scathing of The Crystal Keeper is that I've read a lot of Diana Wynne Jones, who does that sort of thing so much better :-) If you haven't read her stuff, I thoroughly recommend it. Her Chrestomanci series is very popular, but I have trouble working out the reading order. Archer's Goon is particularly good, as are The Homeward Bounders and Dogsbody.