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m0springer 's review for:
The Ables
by Jeremy Scott
2 out of 5 stars. It was okay.
I really wanted to like this book. I'm subscribed to CinemaSins, I love their videos, and when I found out Jeremy Scott had written a book, I was excited to read it. The cover looks intriguing, the title is short but interesting. It's a story about a kid who's blind but has superpowers in a town full of superpowered-people. How could it not be good?
Well. Here we are.
The main thing that really ruined this book for me was the monumental amount of telling instead of showing. There are times where someone will say something in dialogue and the narrator, Phillip, will then tell the reader what it means was just said. Or, something funny will happen and Phillip will proceed to explain why it was funny. That's not including all the times we don't even get to see something happen or be said, we just get Phillip TELLING us it happened. For example:
"We talked to Donnie plenty -- don't get me wrong. We would say something about Old Lady Crouch -- that's what we called her, somewhat affectionately -- and then turn to him and say things like "Isn't that right, Donnie?"
The reader isn't show that this is how they talk to Donnie, we're just told that.
Another example:
"Now it's important to note that Henry's wheelchair was relatively new -- it had been a birthday present several weeks prior."
This is about halfway into the book, and this is the only mention of Henry's birthday. We don't get to see Henry's birthday celebrations. We never hear any of the characters mention Henry's birthday. Nope. We're just told it happened several weeks after the fact.
And one more example, for good measure:
"He'd talked for almost fifteen minutes straight as he and I sat on the picnic table in Mr. Charles' cornfield."
I can't give details about that scene because it has spoilers, but I'll sum it up as best I can. A character and Phillip have a long and important conversation, and we aren't show about 99% of it. There's like 4 or 5 lines of dialogue, and the rest is summed up by Phillip after the fact. It would be like if you didn't get to see the final play of the Super Bowl, you just got the play by play told to you by someone who didn't anything about sports.
The characters aren't very interesting. All the adults are incredibly one sided and dull. Even the hero, Phillip, doesn't have any personality beyond being the hero. His friends have some sort of resemblance of identities. For example, there's Bentley, whose superpower is that he's really smart. Now, that could give potential to some complex character arc, but nope. The author just uses him as a means to spout out a lot of exposition.
As for the plot, by the time anything really important started happening, I was so bored and so uninterested in these characters I couldn't care less when something really bad happened.
I really wanted to like this book. I'm subscribed to CinemaSins, I love their videos, and when I found out Jeremy Scott had written a book, I was excited to read it. The cover looks intriguing, the title is short but interesting. It's a story about a kid who's blind but has superpowers in a town full of superpowered-people. How could it not be good?
Well. Here we are.
The main thing that really ruined this book for me was the monumental amount of telling instead of showing. There are times where someone will say something in dialogue and the narrator, Phillip, will then tell the reader what it means was just said. Or, something funny will happen and Phillip will proceed to explain why it was funny. That's not including all the times we don't even get to see something happen or be said, we just get Phillip TELLING us it happened. For example:
"We talked to Donnie plenty -- don't get me wrong. We would say something about Old Lady Crouch -- that's what we called her, somewhat affectionately -- and then turn to him and say things like "Isn't that right, Donnie?"
The reader isn't show that this is how they talk to Donnie, we're just told that.
Another example:
"Now it's important to note that Henry's wheelchair was relatively new -- it had been a birthday present several weeks prior."
This is about halfway into the book, and this is the only mention of Henry's birthday. We don't get to see Henry's birthday celebrations. We never hear any of the characters mention Henry's birthday. Nope. We're just told it happened several weeks after the fact.
And one more example, for good measure:
"He'd talked for almost fifteen minutes straight as he and I sat on the picnic table in Mr. Charles' cornfield."
I can't give details about that scene because it has spoilers, but I'll sum it up as best I can. A character and Phillip have a long and important conversation, and we aren't show about 99% of it. There's like 4 or 5 lines of dialogue, and the rest is summed up by Phillip after the fact. It would be like if you didn't get to see the final play of the Super Bowl, you just got the play by play told to you by someone who didn't anything about sports.
The characters aren't very interesting. All the adults are incredibly one sided and dull. Even the hero, Phillip, doesn't have any personality beyond being the hero. His friends have some sort of resemblance of identities. For example, there's Bentley, whose superpower is that he's really smart. Now, that could give potential to some complex character arc, but nope. The author just uses him as a means to spout out a lot of exposition.
As for the plot, by the time anything really important started happening, I was so bored and so uninterested in these characters I couldn't care less when something really bad happened.