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3.14 AVERAGE
3.14 AVERAGE
This was definitely out of my wheelhouse, I'm not huge into Fantasy or RPG's at all, but I'll tell you what. I gave it a chance, and it paid off. I found myself really into the story, and rooting for Perry, Ada, and Mortin. I think it helped that the chapters were short and the story was relatively fast-paced and moved well. I'm not exactly ready to roll the 20-sided dice, but I will for sure recommend this to my students who enjoy Fantasy & RPG's.
DNF at 100p. The premise was good, but the execution was poor, at best.
I love Ned Vizzini.
He bit off a bit more with this book than I think he was ready to chew. His characters were (as always) brilliantly crafted, and the idea of the correspondents made character creation even dicier; he had to create similarities without giving away pairings. The plotline was solid as well; a perfect action/adventure/coming of age story that makes it easily relatable for teens and fans of all genres.
The 'more than he could chew' part comes with the world-building; in crafting an alternate reality that split off 600 million years ago, Vizzini really, really struggled. This book was not meant to be consumed as hyper-realistic, but even then there were massive holes in crafting the world of the other normals that made it hard to buy in. I would have loved to see more world-building, and I don't think it needed to come at the expense of any other part of the book; it wasn't too long to begin with, and the short, tiny chapters made it all easily digestible.
That said, Vizzini created a funny little world to take in and I once again had my heart opened to a less-lovable character like Perry. Kudos for that.
He bit off a bit more with this book than I think he was ready to chew. His characters were (as always) brilliantly crafted, and the idea of the correspondents made character creation even dicier; he had to create similarities without giving away pairings. The plotline was solid as well; a perfect action/adventure/coming of age story that makes it easily relatable for teens and fans of all genres.
The 'more than he could chew' part comes with the world-building; in crafting an alternate reality that split off 600 million years ago, Vizzini really, really struggled. This book was not meant to be consumed as hyper-realistic, but even then there were massive holes in crafting the world of the other normals that made it hard to buy in. I would have loved to see more world-building, and I don't think it needed to come at the expense of any other part of the book; it wasn't too long to begin with, and the short, tiny chapters made it all easily digestible.
That said, Vizzini created a funny little world to take in and I once again had my heart opened to a less-lovable character like Perry. Kudos for that.
This book has taken me back to my weird, outcast teen years. And somehow that's not a bad thing.
As they embark on their quest, Perry realizes that his nerdy childhood has uniquely prepared him to be a great warrior in this world, and maybe even a hero.
This might be a little over rated...
I liked the concept of the story and it started quiet promising. But to me the author missed out on exploiting his idea to the fullest. Th ending was rather poorly to disappointing I mean
This might be a little over rated...
I liked the concept of the story and it started quiet promising. But to me the author missed out on exploiting his idea to the fullest. Th ending was rather poorly to disappointing I mean
Spoiler
Ok it wasn't a compleet fail, but they didn't succeed in completing the initial quest of saving the Princess nor kissing Anna
What a shame it is that this author passed away. This book could have easily become a beloved series. It captures the youth of this realistic non-cookie-cutter teenage boy so perfectly. He's an outcast, someone who doesn't fit into any of the cliques. His parents are divorced, and both dating their divorce attorneys (hilarious, by the way). And all he wants to do is create characters for a role-playing game (which he's never played, because he has no one to play with him). That alone makes this book remarkable and moving. BUT IT GOES ON! In today's fiction market, there's a category called magical realism. What Ned Vizzini has done with this book is give the reader Fantasy Realism! (Yes, that's an exclamation point. And honestly, this book does it so well that I'm going to leave three more here just because that's how I really feel. !!! ) For my fellow Harry Potter fans-- Imagine if you found a portkey and it took you to Diagon Alley. That's basically the idea here. Oh, and then you'd have to escape some evil wizards to get back. And then deal with dating and dances as a teenager attempting those things for the first time. And your world would be different, but you're the only one who would know. And then more stuff would happen to make this even more "epic" yet. Yes, that's a way to describe this book. If you read or write fantasy, if you've ever felt like you didn't belong to ANY of the available groups or cliques, or if you enjoy tabletop RPG -- go, read this book. Now. Seriously. You're welcome
Ned Vizzini's The Other Normals tells the story of Perry Eckert, a young math whiz whose divorced parents' lawyers agree that it would be cheaper to send him to summer camp than to feed him at home, and since he got kicked off the math team, there's no reason not to send him. Also, socializing with other kids at camp could be good for him--his parents and brother think he spends too much time alone creating characters and reading rulebooks for the role-playing game, Creatures & Caverns. It's sadder than your usual stereotype of a fantasy role-playing game geek because these games are intended to be played by more than one person.
Perry goes to camp and runs into a fantasy creature similar to ones he plays in C&C who takes him to the world of the Other Normals--an alternate dimension version of earth that's still very closely tied to Perry's earth. He has adventures there, crosses back over to camp, goes back to the other normals, back to camp, adventures left and right, with Vizzini's humor injected throughout.
It's a fun, light fantasy x coming of age story. I'll acknowledge that I'm not a young adult, and that perhaps that's why I found the story to be less satisfying. The humor was occasionally too similar to an Adam Sandler movie for my taste. You do have to suspend belief for a magical conduit to another dimension that involves mushrooms and a car battery, but even so Perry sometimes behaves in an over the top manner that's forehead-slappingly unbelievable (SPOILER: a scene in which Perry's love interest at camp accuses him of being a boy, not a man, involves him dropping his pants in front everyone at the camp dance). If that sounds like the sort of thing that makes you chuckle, and you enjoy adventure and fantasy world building, visit The Other Normals for yourself.
Perry goes to camp and runs into a fantasy creature similar to ones he plays in C&C who takes him to the world of the Other Normals--an alternate dimension version of earth that's still very closely tied to Perry's earth. He has adventures there, crosses back over to camp, goes back to the other normals, back to camp, adventures left and right, with Vizzini's humor injected throughout.
It's a fun, light fantasy x coming of age story. I'll acknowledge that I'm not a young adult, and that perhaps that's why I found the story to be less satisfying. The humor was occasionally too similar to an Adam Sandler movie for my taste. You do have to suspend belief for a magical conduit to another dimension that involves mushrooms and a car battery, but even so Perry sometimes behaves in an over the top manner that's forehead-slappingly unbelievable (SPOILER: a scene in which Perry's love interest at camp accuses him of being a boy, not a man, involves him dropping his pants in front everyone at the camp dance). If that sounds like the sort of thing that makes you chuckle, and you enjoy adventure and fantasy world building, visit The Other Normals for yourself.
official rating is a 3.5. it wasn't life changing but definitely a fun and funny read! Haven't laughed out loud so much in a while by reading a book.
For me, the best mark of a fantasy book is whether I’d want to live in the world.
It began with Narnia, as it almost always does. Who wouldn't want to adventure in a world where nothing ever seems to go *super* wrong, and even if you're responsible for the death of the creator of the world you still win the consolation prize of being the freaking King.
It's a bit easy, though, isn't it? That's why with books that were clear descendants of Narnia but had more bits of realism stuck in the way (to a point), like The Phantom Tollbooth or, more recently, The Magicians. Obviously Tollbooth isn't quite realism, but the consequences seemed much more logical and directly resulting from the character's actions more than the "Well, you tried your best" aesthetic employed by Aslan.
This is all by way of explaining my ambivalence toward The Other Normals. It's a nice idea but I feel like it's been much better and to better effect elsewhere. It's a pretty standard postmodern fantasy draw-in: Boy obsessed with a particular media series (in this case, a D&D stand-in) gets magically whisked away to the world that media was based on, goes on quests, etc. Only this one involves a lot more "intentional indecent exposure at a high school dance" than the Pevensies ever dealt with.
I had troubles with the narrator. On the one hand you can say he was more realistic because of his many flaws, but his actions seemed more random and spastic than indications of character facets to be overcome. The mystical connection between the worlds, which serves to alter events and realities, only seemed to work when absolutely necessary and seemed woefully inadequate to explain what actually happened.
I don't want to seem too negative — it's a nice introduction to fantasy, particularly the kind of fantasy that seems more real because kids like you can get drawn into it, and probably would serve as a good bridge for the tween/teen who's familiar with Narnia but not really ready for Lev Grossman's The Magicians Trilogy. For the rest of us, though, there are better places to get the same fix.
It began with Narnia, as it almost always does. Who wouldn't want to adventure in a world where nothing ever seems to go *super* wrong, and even if you're responsible for the death of the creator of the world you still win the consolation prize of being the freaking King.
It's a bit easy, though, isn't it? That's why with books that were clear descendants of Narnia but had more bits of realism stuck in the way (to a point), like The Phantom Tollbooth or, more recently, The Magicians. Obviously Tollbooth isn't quite realism, but the consequences seemed much more logical and directly resulting from the character's actions more than the "Well, you tried your best" aesthetic employed by Aslan.
This is all by way of explaining my ambivalence toward The Other Normals. It's a nice idea but I feel like it's been much better and to better effect elsewhere. It's a pretty standard postmodern fantasy draw-in: Boy obsessed with a particular media series (in this case, a D&D stand-in) gets magically whisked away to the world that media was based on, goes on quests, etc. Only this one involves a lot more "intentional indecent exposure at a high school dance" than the Pevensies ever dealt with.
I had troubles with the narrator. On the one hand you can say he was more realistic because of his many flaws, but his actions seemed more random and spastic than indications of character facets to be overcome. The mystical connection between the worlds, which serves to alter events and realities, only seemed to work when absolutely necessary and seemed woefully inadequate to explain what actually happened.
I don't want to seem too negative — it's a nice introduction to fantasy, particularly the kind of fantasy that seems more real because kids like you can get drawn into it, and probably would serve as a good bridge for the tween/teen who's familiar with Narnia but not really ready for Lev Grossman's The Magicians Trilogy. For the rest of us, though, there are better places to get the same fix.