Take a photo of a barcode or cover
claudiaqreads 's review for:
Monsters of Men
by Patrick Ness
3.5/5 rounded up. TLDR: The writing style of this book put me off in a way that is probably entirely personal so I will talk about it but not hold it against it too bad. A mostly decent conclusion to this really good series.
This is the conclusion of the Chaos Walking series. The last two books were absolutely amazing so I am a little disappointed to have struggled so much with this one.
We again pick up with Viola and Todd as they try to keep the world together that is rapidly being pulled apart by opposing forces. A greater threat pulls everyone together as they race the clock to make the world safe for the large incoming population.
So my problems with this book might be entirely personal: I often struggle with multi-POV (which seems like its every single YA/fantasy/sci fi book nowadays). The last book of the series opened us up to the perspective of Viola. This book adds a third POV but the problem comes less from that addition and more into how often the perspective shifts. It’s constant. Scenes will be told from character and mid-sentence swap to another character. It was too much and really broke my ‘reading flow’. Swapping POV’s really resets my brain kind of like walking through a doorway and you forgot why you walked into the room in the first place. So imagine that happening every other page and you have the story slowed down dramatically for myself. Its frustrating to constantly reorient my own brain.
Second, I really didn’t like where we went with the villain. The reasonings for keeping him around and with power and trust seemed flimsy and nonsensical, which made what he got away with more and more ridiculous. He went from being mysterious and terrifying in the last book to a petty crazy person in this one.
There are definitely things I did like in this though. I thought the background and info about the Spackle was a welcome and interesting addition. I really liked Simon as a new character and hearing how a new man adjusts to the Noise on the planet. Viola and Todd continued to be wonderful characters and they are so ride-or-die that I love them to pieces. They had a little bump in the road but honestly it just made it clear how much love there was between them to me that Viola couldn’t stand to be separated from any part of Todd.
There was definitely plenty to love, I just struggled to read it because of the formatting. Otherwise, I would definitely recommend this series! It was a really pleasant surprise.
Bonus content (ha):
I also didn’t realize they made this into a movie until I was almost done the series. Just watched the preview and uh, no thank you. I feel like I could have told anyone this wouldn’t make a good movie. Anyone read books they just know won't translate to screen well?
This is the conclusion of the Chaos Walking series. The last two books were absolutely amazing so I am a little disappointed to have struggled so much with this one.
We again pick up with Viola and Todd as they try to keep the world together that is rapidly being pulled apart by opposing forces. A greater threat pulls everyone together as they race the clock to make the world safe for the large incoming population.
So my problems with this book might be entirely personal: I often struggle with multi-POV (which seems like its every single YA/fantasy/sci fi book nowadays). The last book of the series opened us up to the perspective of Viola. This book adds a third POV but the problem comes less from that addition and more into how often the perspective shifts. It’s constant. Scenes will be told from character and mid-sentence swap to another character. It was too much and really broke my ‘reading flow’. Swapping POV’s really resets my brain kind of like walking through a doorway and you forgot why you walked into the room in the first place. So imagine that happening every other page and you have the story slowed down dramatically for myself. Its frustrating to constantly reorient my own brain.
Second, I really didn’t like where we went with the villain. The reasonings for keeping him around and with power and trust seemed flimsy and nonsensical, which made what he got away with more and more ridiculous. He went from being mysterious and terrifying in the last book to a petty crazy person in this one.
There are definitely things I did like in this though. I thought the background and info about the Spackle was a welcome and interesting addition. I really liked Simon as a new character and hearing how a new man adjusts to the Noise on the planet. Viola and Todd continued to be wonderful characters and they are so ride-or-die that I love them to pieces. They had a little bump in the road but honestly it just made it clear how much love there was between them to me that Viola couldn’t stand to be separated from any part of Todd.
There was definitely plenty to love, I just struggled to read it because of the formatting. Otherwise, I would definitely recommend this series! It was a really pleasant surprise.
Bonus content (ha):
I also didn’t realize they made this into a movie until I was almost done the series. Just watched the preview and uh, no thank you. I feel like I could have told anyone this wouldn’t make a good movie. Anyone read books they just know won't translate to screen well?