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A review by wyntrchylde
Far North by Marcel Theroux
2.0
Far North
Author: Marcel Theroux
Publisher: Locator / Farrar, Straus, and Giroux / Pan Books Ltd
Publishing Date: 2009
=======================================
REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS
Summary:
My father had an expression for a thing that turned out bad. He'd say it had gone west. But going west always sounded pretty good to me. After all, westwards is the path of the sun. And through as much history as I know of, people have moved west to settle and find freedom. But our world had gone north, truly gone north, and just how far north I was beginning to learn.
Out on the frontier of a failed state, Makepeace―sheriff and perhaps last citizen―patrols a city's ruins, salvaging books but keeping the guns in good repair.
Into this cold land comes shocking evidence that life might be flourishing elsewhere: a refugee emerges from the vast emptiness of forest, whose existence inspires Makepeace to reconnect with human society and take to the road, armed with rough humor and an unlikely ration of optimism.
What Makepeace finds is a world unraveling: stockaded villages enforcing an uncertain justice and hidden work camps laboring to harness the little-understood technologies of a vanished civilization. But Makepeace's journey―rife with danger―also leads to an unexpected redemption.
Far North takes the reader on a quest through an unforgettable arctic landscape, from humanity's origins to its possible end. Haunting, spare, yet stubbornly hopeful, the novel is suffused with an ecstatic awareness of the world's fragility and beauty, and its ability to recover from our worst trespasses.
_________________________________________
Genre:
Post Apocalypse
Dystopia
Fiction
_________________________________________
The Page 100 Test:
Ω ◄ - struggle to finish this.
? ◄ - Just not sure about this.
(≖_≖ ) ◄ - side eyeing this
± ◄ - could go either way
Ÿ ◄ - this is causing fallopian discomfort
DNF: Pg#Read/TotPg#
The Feel:
Was expecting a "The Road" vibe. But already got it by page 2.
Favorite Character:
There is only one character, really. Makepeace is it. All the other people who appear have been cardboard cutouts.
Least Favorite Character:
Character I Most Identified With:
Plot Holes/Out of Character:
For us to accept that Makepeace is a survivor living in a post-apocalypse world, they sure do many foolish things in service to the plot. Walking into traps, failing to hide the bottle well enough that someone riding their backtrail couldn’t find it, going back to the base under any circumstances, just foolish. I know we're looking at it from the God's eye view of the reader and author, but Makepeace is out-of-character too much. Someone who survived. Someone who took on the role of sheriff. Someone who was trained as a sheriff by a ranger who got killed doing his job would make them more suspicious and wary than Makepeace acts throughout much of the book.
Favorite Quote:
"Yes, somewhere along the ladder of years I lost the bright-eyed best of me." A pretty harsh indictment of growing older.
Calling the Ball:
Kick In The Gut: Page 38, even seeing it coming, smacks HARD.
Meh / PFFT Moments:
The “he’s my brother’ coincidence is too heavy-handed.
Going home and then turning to chase the plane...I get that the crashed plane was the reason she decided to not commit suicide and try and find where in the world the plane had come from, but, geez, walking back into that base and the trap that it was after their actions.
Turd in the Punchbowl:
Them loving up to the glowing blue bottle isn't intelligent. These people are close enough to us timeline-wise that they would be leery of the glowing bottle.
Confirmation Bias:
Between what happened with Ping and the after at the lake, "The Road" vibes are strong.
Strikeout:
Strike One: I'm still reading, but I'm probably one strike from considering putting it down.
The relationship with her friend from prison when he was infected with whatever was in the glowing bottles happens off-page but doesn’t appear to have even been referenced. I mean, maybe I missed something, but that felt very left-field to me.
Predictability/Non-Predictability:
So, it's like a dystopian greatest hits, first, it was The Road, then, A Handmaid's Tale, and now it's a hybrid Shawshank Redemption. I'm still reading, but it's feeling off to me.
_________________________________________
Pacing:
Need more to happen. It's been a lot of pages since an event happened to move the story forward. The discovery of Makepeace's secret in prison isn't an event but is treated as one. And if something does happen because of that, then, we'll just be in salacious territory.
Last Page Sound:
Liked it well enough to finish it. Wanted to see what happened to Makepeace.
Editorial Assessment:
This could've stood a little closer to an editor's pen. There are a couple of spots where sentences are clunky or malformed. And at least one spot where guards are referred to as prisoners after the prisoners had already been sent across the bridge into the city. Course with the way this world works, maybe that’s right and the guards are prisoners after a fashion.
=======================================
Author: Marcel Theroux
Publisher: Locator / Farrar, Straus, and Giroux / Pan Books Ltd
Publishing Date: 2009
=======================================
REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS
Summary:
My father had an expression for a thing that turned out bad. He'd say it had gone west. But going west always sounded pretty good to me. After all, westwards is the path of the sun. And through as much history as I know of, people have moved west to settle and find freedom. But our world had gone north, truly gone north, and just how far north I was beginning to learn.
Out on the frontier of a failed state, Makepeace―sheriff and perhaps last citizen―patrols a city's ruins, salvaging books but keeping the guns in good repair.
Into this cold land comes shocking evidence that life might be flourishing elsewhere: a refugee emerges from the vast emptiness of forest, whose existence inspires Makepeace to reconnect with human society and take to the road, armed with rough humor and an unlikely ration of optimism.
What Makepeace finds is a world unraveling: stockaded villages enforcing an uncertain justice and hidden work camps laboring to harness the little-understood technologies of a vanished civilization. But Makepeace's journey―rife with danger―also leads to an unexpected redemption.
Far North takes the reader on a quest through an unforgettable arctic landscape, from humanity's origins to its possible end. Haunting, spare, yet stubbornly hopeful, the novel is suffused with an ecstatic awareness of the world's fragility and beauty, and its ability to recover from our worst trespasses.
_________________________________________
Genre:
Post Apocalypse
Dystopia
Fiction
_________________________________________
The Page 100 Test:
Ω ◄ - struggle to finish this.
? ◄ - Just not sure about this.
(≖_≖ ) ◄ - side eyeing this
± ◄ - could go either way
Ÿ ◄ - this is causing fallopian discomfort
DNF: Pg#Read/TotPg#
The Feel:
Was expecting a "The Road" vibe. But already got it by page 2.
Favorite Character:
There is only one character, really. Makepeace is it. All the other people who appear have been cardboard cutouts.
Least Favorite Character:
Character I Most Identified With:
Plot Holes/Out of Character:
For us to accept that Makepeace is a survivor living in a post-apocalypse world, they sure do many foolish things in service to the plot. Walking into traps, failing to hide the bottle well enough that someone riding their backtrail couldn’t find it, going back to the base under any circumstances, just foolish. I know we're looking at it from the God's eye view of the reader and author, but Makepeace is out-of-character too much. Someone who survived. Someone who took on the role of sheriff. Someone who was trained as a sheriff by a ranger who got killed doing his job would make them more suspicious and wary than Makepeace acts throughout much of the book.
Favorite Quote:
"Yes, somewhere along the ladder of years I lost the bright-eyed best of me." A pretty harsh indictment of growing older.
Calling the Ball:
Kick In The Gut: Page 38, even seeing it coming, smacks HARD.
Meh / PFFT Moments:
The “he’s my brother’ coincidence is too heavy-handed.
Going home and then turning to chase the plane...I get that the crashed plane was the reason she decided to not commit suicide and try and find where in the world the plane had come from, but, geez, walking back into that base and the trap that it was after their actions.
Turd in the Punchbowl:
Them loving up to the glowing blue bottle isn't intelligent. These people are close enough to us timeline-wise that they would be leery of the glowing bottle.
Confirmation Bias:
Between what happened with Ping and the after at the lake, "The Road" vibes are strong.
Strikeout:
Strike One: I'm still reading, but I'm probably one strike from considering putting it down.
The relationship with her friend from prison when he was infected with whatever was in the glowing bottles happens off-page but doesn’t appear to have even been referenced. I mean, maybe I missed something, but that felt very left-field to me.
Predictability/Non-Predictability:
So, it's like a dystopian greatest hits, first, it was The Road, then, A Handmaid's Tale, and now it's a hybrid Shawshank Redemption. I'm still reading, but it's feeling off to me.
_________________________________________
Pacing:
Need more to happen. It's been a lot of pages since an event happened to move the story forward. The discovery of Makepeace's secret in prison isn't an event but is treated as one. And if something does happen because of that, then, we'll just be in salacious territory.
Last Page Sound:
Liked it well enough to finish it. Wanted to see what happened to Makepeace.
Editorial Assessment:
This could've stood a little closer to an editor's pen. There are a couple of spots where sentences are clunky or malformed. And at least one spot where guards are referred to as prisoners after the prisoners had already been sent across the bridge into the city. Course with the way this world works, maybe that’s right and the guards are prisoners after a fashion.
=======================================