Reviews

The Remarkable Retirement of Edna Fisher by E.M. Anderson

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elvenrapier's review

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adventurous inspiring medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

local_hat's review

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I really wanted to like this, and it is just grating on me. I hate when that happens.

invisibleninjacat's review

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adventurous emotional funny lighthearted tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

This was great, with lots of poking fun at Chosen One tropes and playing with reader expectations of dragons and knights in literature. Having Edna be older meant that while she's not untraumatized, her trauma is old and scarred over, and she's able to work with and around it in a way that teenager Clem can't. The twists were all amazing.

betharanova's review against another edition

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3.0

This book nailed its own goals. What it set out to accomplish, it did. It just wasn't what I wanted it to do.

The premise is simple: an eighty-three-year-old woman is named the Chosen One, and she must venture forth to save the country from an evil dragon-riding sorcerer. She is accompanied by her orderly, the teenage girl who wanted to be Chosen One, and (unbeknownst to the group) one of the sorcerer's soldiers, tasked with bringing the Chosen One to his friend and leader. Over the course of the journey, the four grow closer and learn more about both sides of the conflict.

This is contemporary fantasy: the tongue-in-cheek opposite to urban fantasy. It is also cozy fantasy, despite the stakes. Our heroes experience more down time than not; it's based on characters and relationships rather than action and plot. It makes a light, quick, occasionally cheeky read. Understatement makes the emotional moments shine.

Unfortunately, it did vex me in a few ways. To be brief:
- Third person omniscient is my least favorite POV for a narrative, especially when, like this one, it bounces from character to character in rapid fire. You hear what every person is thinking in a scene.
- Characters were largely incompetent. There was a lot of bonding time and character development because they weren't doing much otherwise. Even the villain was inefficient.
- (Most incompetence was the result of disorders. They had anxiety or PTSD, which made them incapable of functioning when basically anything was happening. Excuse you?)
- The villain was right. They should have let him fix the real problem. Instead, they stopped him, and the real problem went blatantly unsolved. Not a happy ending.

More than anything, this book was about two things: the bonds we choose to form with the people around us, and the cycle of abuse with its many dangers. It's a book about found family and choosing to be better than the people who hurt you. Everything came cleanly around to those messages without hesitation. This book set out to do something and it DID it, with unwavering focus. The things I was left unsatisfied about were simply things that were not the book's priority. We have irreconcilable differences.

It's light, it's funny, and I did get emotional. But damn. [pokes characters with a stick] Do somethin'.