saint_eleanor's profile picture

saint_eleanor 's review for:

James by Percival Everett
4.0
adventurous dark emotional hopeful inspiring sad tense fast-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: No

This is objectively a really good book and super quick and easy to finish. At first the writing style felt very detached to me like I felt like I was a step removed from James' thoughts and feelings which kind of softened the blow on the more emotional parts, but then you kind of find out that  there's an explanation for that which I really liked. 
This is really an adventure book with devastating historical context, I don't remember enough about Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn to say how much it departs from that canon or whatever, but I feel like kids should have to read this as a companion to Tom Sawyer if not just this one by itself. I feel like this is an important book and although the stakes are life and death the scenebuilding is so beautiful, the Mississippi river and the steamboats and the forests, wow. 

Expand filter menu Content Warnings