Number 80- The Great Troll War- Jasper Fforde

 

The conclusion of the Last Dragonslayer tetralogy. I brought this many spots up the TBR after the cliffhanger at the end of book 3. 

Jennifer Strange is back and facing her greatest challenge yet. At the end of the last book, we found out that in her forced excursion to wales, trolls had invaded the rest of the UnUK. Now only Jenny and her ragtag bunch of friends are all that stands between the troll's complete takeover of the land, and also the Wizard Shandar's fiendish plans for world domination at the very least.

As usual this is brilliantly inventive stuff.  despite being YA, the plot has become extremely convoluted and elements from all three previous books are essential to following the story.

It's hysterically funny- also as usual.  But the drama in this volume sometimes overwhelms the comedy.  There are a couple of character deaths that felt unnecessarily cruel on this particular reader at least.  I liked those guys! Damn you Fforde! 

I know he's writing about a war and people will have to die... but not those guys 😢😢

That's probably a good criticism that he's made me feel so much for the death of fictional characters but I'm reading a comedy. I didn't expect those feels.

The solutions to the problems are ingenious (once again as usual) and the clues are layered through the narrative flawlessly so none of it came so far out of left field as to feel dumb (the author of the previous book I reviewed could take notes here). 

Page 215 is the most glorious piece of meta-fiction I've read in many years. 

This probably wouldn't work as a standalone novel, but as the closing part of a genius series, it works amazingly well. lots of laughs, and some sad farewells.

Recommended reading - as long as you've read the other three.

Number 79- Where Sleeping Girls Lie- Faridah Abike-Iyimide

 

Another book with pretty red spredges.

This YA novel was the choice at a new book group I joined recently and would probably have slipped past my consciousness entirely otherwise. 

Sade Hussein (luckily she corrects someone on how to pronounce her name about three pages in so I knew Shar-day rather than say-d) is the new girl at an exclusive boarding school. Her room mate disappears on her first night and a few weeks later, a student is found dead at one of Newton House's famous parties.

Sade is suspected to be involved in both of these incidents. Can she prove her innocence?  What are her own deep hidden secrets?

This was all going fine for the first 400 pages or so despite some reservations on the nature of the school itself. Then the explanations started to kick in and IMHO the story pretty much fell to pieces.

On the subject of the nature of the school.  This is supposed to be a boarding school somewhere near London, England. However, Sade has apparently joined the third year.  She's 16- which would make her a 5th former (or maybe year 10 these days). The school has it's autumn half term two weeks after Halloween- which is far too  late unless the term only started in October (a month late for UK schools). There's no mention of GCSE's- which 16 year-olds would be studying for, or A' levels which the 17 year old forth years would have been starting to study for. The whole set up of the school is very alien to the UK. This has been written for the US market with no thought to make the school feel like an English school would.  I suspect the UK setting is merely for the upper/lower class divide. I don't know where the author lives but she has either done zero research into the UK school system or she did and ignored it all for her market of choice- even reading Harry potter would have given her clues how to make it more convincing to UK readers. It shares strong similarities to Netflix's Sex Education in that regard.

I was willing to give it a pass on the school being so US-centric because it was a decent enough read. But then the plot revelations started piling in in all their unconvincing lack of glory. I'm always willing to forgive some narrative flaws in YA books, predictability, oversimplification of themes, some unrealistic adult behaviour, etc.  These books aren't written with savvy adult readers in mind. But this just started taking things too far. The allegations coming forward would have pretty much closed down the school instantly they were made public.

The fact that every straight male character in the book was a villain was quite noticeable. Every single diversity tick box was ticked except for nice straight male. Yes, the book is trying to warn against a certain type of predatory behaviour, but... 

I would expand on the exact plot points but that would be quite spoilerific and I didn't hate the book enough to do that. Overall this starts well and descends into silliness. I will say that considering the revelations about Sade's family, the central villain of the piece would certainly have recognised her more than just a passing "have I met you before?" line when they met, and he certainly wouldn't have acted the way he did towards her. 

Good to kill a few days.  A quick easy read but unconvincing even by YA standards, and a bit irritating. But it has nice spredges.