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briarfairchild 's review for:
Thorn Jack
by Katherine Harbour
This was... acceptable, I guess. The thing is, Tam Lin is a story I love and am a teeny tiny bit obsessed with, so I read every novelisation/adaptation of it I can get my hands on. And honestly, this wasn't one of my favourites. There was the (unconvincing) insta-love between Finn and Jack, which is such a tedious and unrealistic trope. I didn't even care that much about Finn who is supposed to be our protagonist, let alone any other characters. I never felt like I got to know her. She's sad because her sister died... there are hints that she has narcolepsy but it's never important and only gets mentioned like four times so I'm not sure why it's there?... and she loves Jack for no apparent reason. It's even worse when we see her through other people's eyes; she's just this frail waifish woman trope. Plus of course she falls in love with the dark mysterious brooding guy, of course. Yawn.
Then the plot is so confused and doesn't entirely make sense.We are told at the end that Reiko always intended for Finn to be the sacrifice, yet this doesn't really add up with her actions in the rest of the book or her attitude towards Jack, whom apparently she loved so much that she grew a heart - yet she's willing to promise to let him go if Finn becomes a willing sacrifice. Does not make sense. And what was the point of the whole thing with Lily Rose? It never comes to anything and there's that weird little epilogue which doesn't seem to have anything to do with the rest of the story ALSO what is that thing at the end where she was allowed to say goodbye to her Da and apparently realised that he would be fine without her just because he happens to be having a nice time with a woman he likes??? No. No. One of his daughters has already died by suicide; he is NOT going to be ok when the second one also dies. God. The plot really seems to be centred around one of those 'plans' where the villain could not possibly allow for or predict all the variables and there's very little likelihood that things would actually happen as they planned yet the author writes it as though it's inevitable. Sigh.
There were some elements I really like. That loving someone makes a fairie grow a heart? Very cool. And the bleeding thing also. I liked the Lily plot threads through the first half of the book; that made it really interesting to me - but sadly they get dropped in the second half in favour of the dry and unconvincing 'romance' between Finn and Jack. This meant that things that you think are going to be important, like ghost Lily giving Finn clues, turn out to be nothing more than convenient plot contrivances to shift things along a bit. There were a couple of characters I was really straining to like - Anna, Angyll, Avaline, Phouka - but ultimately we never got enough of them to really fall for them. And of course I enjoyed a new-ish take on the Tam Lin ballad.
Thorn Jack read to me like a version of Pamela Dean's Tam Lin but super romanticised and with less real characters. Honestly, there are so many parallells, from Finn having a sister called Lily and a father who's a college professor to the faeries loving Shakespeare.
I love the Tam Lin ballad story and I thought the Tam Lin parts of Thorn Jack were, on the whole, well done. The problem a novelisation has is that it must devise a whole story to go on around the first half of the ballad, because like half of it is just the shape-changing scene. Thorn Jack did this by being a bit tricksy with the plot, making it seem like it was one thing in the beginning and something quite different in the end. It's possible to do a good mislead but I don't think that's what this was, or if it was, it was inexpertly done. Instead it reads like the author changed her mind halfway through on what she wanted the story to be about.
I liked the sacrifice switcheroo -that because by attempting suicide Nathan had shown himself to be no longer willing and therefore a new victim would be needed. What I didn't like about this was that... it must have been part of the plan where Reiko wanted Finn to be the sacrifice all along, yet that doesn't make sense because she couldn't have predicted this would happen. which suddenly made the whole tiend thing very personal to Finn (the second switcheroo not so much). I was sad not to have the procession, which is always fun, but liked the party setting for the sacrifice instead. But I was very confused by what happened at the end and how Finn managed to save Jack... why didn't he burn like the others? No reason given, just someone winks and hints that 'things are not as they seem'. Not good enough. .
Ultimately I really wanted to like this, but the characters were so shallow, flat and uninteresting that I didn't feel inclined to forgive the flaws in plot and writing.
Then the plot is so confused and doesn't entirely make sense.
There were some elements I really like. That loving someone makes a fairie grow a heart? Very cool. And the bleeding thing also. I liked the Lily plot threads through the first half of the book; that made it really interesting to me - but sadly they get dropped in the second half in favour of the dry and unconvincing 'romance' between Finn and Jack. This meant that things that you think are going to be important, like ghost Lily giving Finn clues, turn out to be nothing more than convenient plot contrivances to shift things along a bit. There were a couple of characters I was really straining to like - Anna, Angyll, Avaline, Phouka - but ultimately we never got enough of them to really fall for them. And of course I enjoyed a new-ish take on the Tam Lin ballad.
Thorn Jack read to me like a version of Pamela Dean's Tam Lin but super romanticised and with less real characters. Honestly, there are so many parallells, from Finn having a sister called Lily and a father who's a college professor to the faeries loving Shakespeare.
I love the Tam Lin ballad story and I thought the Tam Lin parts of Thorn Jack were, on the whole, well done. The problem a novelisation has is that it must devise a whole story to go on around the first half of the ballad, because like half of it is just the shape-changing scene. Thorn Jack did this by being a bit tricksy with the plot, making it seem like it was one thing in the beginning and something quite different in the end. It's possible to do a good mislead but I don't think that's what this was, or if it was, it was inexpertly done. Instead it reads like the author changed her mind halfway through on what she wanted the story to be about.
I liked the sacrifice switcheroo -
Ultimately I really wanted to like this, but the characters were so shallow, flat and uninteresting that I didn't feel inclined to forgive the flaws in plot and writing.