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A review by mjoyner
Riverland by Fran Wilde
2.0
Though initially delighted to get my hands on an advanced copy of Riverland, I soon felt burdened by the task of getting through what I had expected to be a fun and fast read. It strikes me as one of those books that simply should have been better. The author seems to be smart and a good writer. She presents an interesting concept with lots of unique elements to make it stick out, but somewhere in the writing process it must have just fallen apart.
The way the story unravels is the real heart of the matter. During the sisters's first journey to the magical other-world, the stakes are set pretty high; the boundaries between reality and the world of dreams are collapsing, and it is our heroines's responsibility to fix it. I strapped myself in for a tense fantasy with lots of harrowing near-misses and a constant clock ticking down to doomsday. But then the girls go back to their world and just... Go about their normal lives for a couple days? Most of the subsequent returns to the dream-world, a place they can only visit at night lest they get trapped there, are spent just lazily touring around, and these visits always end with a mad dash back to their world. The emotions that any one chapter were meant to evoke in the reader felt totally incongruous.
For a while, I thought Fran Wilde was employing a clever gimmick by having the tone of and movement through the dream-world reflect how time often unwinds at weird rates in dreams. In the same way, I assumed Wilde's poetic writing style and her descriptions that managed to be both very specific and fuzzy-'round-the-edges were a part of a dream motif. Since neither of these were ever proven to be on purpose, I assume they were just flukes.
For what it's worth, Wilde does capture the inner world of an abused child well. Both sisters are hyper-aware of their mistakes, because they've grown up in a context where any error has dire consequences. They use imagination as a coping mechanism. They also condemn all anger, even the normal and healthy kind, because of their associations with their raging father. As a librarian, I welcome books that will expose kids to real-life struggles. Riverland could have been a good resource for children in messy family situations, but I fear the odd style and pacing will make it inaccessible to the kids who need it most.
The way the story unravels is the real heart of the matter. During the sisters's first journey to the magical other-world, the stakes are set pretty high; the boundaries between reality and the world of dreams are collapsing, and it is our heroines's responsibility to fix it. I strapped myself in for a tense fantasy with lots of harrowing near-misses and a constant clock ticking down to doomsday. But then the girls go back to their world and just... Go about their normal lives for a couple days? Most of the subsequent returns to the dream-world, a place they can only visit at night lest they get trapped there, are spent just lazily touring around, and these visits always end with a mad dash back to their world. The emotions that any one chapter were meant to evoke in the reader felt totally incongruous.
For a while, I thought Fran Wilde was employing a clever gimmick by having the tone of and movement through the dream-world reflect how time often unwinds at weird rates in dreams. In the same way, I assumed Wilde's poetic writing style and her descriptions that managed to be both very specific and fuzzy-'round-the-edges were a part of a dream motif. Since neither of these were ever proven to be on purpose, I assume they were just flukes.
For what it's worth, Wilde does capture the inner world of an abused child well. Both sisters are hyper-aware of their mistakes, because they've grown up in a context where any error has dire consequences. They use imagination as a coping mechanism. They also condemn all anger, even the normal and healthy kind, because of their associations with their raging father. As a librarian, I welcome books that will expose kids to real-life struggles. Riverland could have been a good resource for children in messy family situations, but I fear the odd style and pacing will make it inaccessible to the kids who need it most.