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A review by tzurky
Infernal Devices by Philip Reeve
2.0
EDIT: definitely the weakest one of the whole bunch. All characterizations grated on me so 2 stars.
I’ll make my issues with this very plain. The author doesn’t really know how to write complex characters. Several reviewers have noted this much earlier. I confess to having missed since I assumed he was merely portraying teenagers as impulsive and driven by a few core desires. I thought he knew that even teenagers were more complex than that and this characterization was merely reflecting surface level crests of emotions.
... I was wrong. The way he DIDN’T develop Hester and Tom showcased this excellently. Yes, these thirty-somethings still think EXACTLY the same way they did as teens. If anything, they’ve grown LESS subtle in thinking. Not only that, Caul and Freya are just as bad. It’s impossible to describe how jarring it is to have someone my age and much more experienced in life express a world-view as stupid as Tom and Hester’s. Great Poskitt! And I’m not even going to get into how out of character Hester is behaving. I get that the author was trying to do a “Daenerys” here but the transition is about as internally consistent and well-managed as that in GoT, i.e. it comes across as a complete 180 turn.
The book’s one saving grace is that there are other characters. I disliked Wren intensely but I liked the others, especially the twice-born and Oenone. And the plot was much more interesting than in the previous one.
I’ll make my issues with this very plain. The author doesn’t really know how to write complex characters. Several reviewers have noted this much earlier. I confess to having missed since I assumed he was merely portraying teenagers as impulsive and driven by a few core desires. I thought he knew that even teenagers were more complex than that and this characterization was merely reflecting surface level crests of emotions.
... I was wrong. The way he DIDN’T develop Hester and Tom showcased this excellently. Yes, these thirty-somethings still think EXACTLY the same way they did as teens. If anything, they’ve grown LESS subtle in thinking. Not only that, Caul and Freya are just as bad. It’s impossible to describe how jarring it is to have someone my age and much more experienced in life express a world-view as stupid as Tom and Hester’s. Great Poskitt! And I’m not even going to get into how out of character Hester is behaving. I get that the author was trying to do a “Daenerys” here but the transition is about as internally consistent and well-managed as that in GoT, i.e. it comes across as a complete 180 turn.
The book’s one saving grace is that there are other characters. I disliked Wren intensely but I liked the others, especially the twice-born and Oenone. And the plot was much more interesting than in the previous one.