A review by fletcher
The Maze in the Heart of the Castle by Dorothy Gilman

1.0

I don't know how my wonderful sixth grade teacher made me enjoy this book so much when I was eleven. She must have a sort of magical voice that made us love anything she read to us, because this novel is utter garbage. On the most basic level it isn't even competent. I found typos everywhere as I read, as though it hadn't even been edited. Despite the medieval setting, modern items like treadmills were mentioned in passing. There were no twists and turns, only tired cliches. The simplest solution to any problem was the one that was taken, and on the next page the protagonist would run into another obvious predicament.

It's so drenched in religious symbolism that I just found myself rolling my eyes whenever the protagonist met a new character, knowing that they would just be another representation of some deadly sin or another. The ending was anticlimactic. Even with the obvious Christian overtones, the moral was unclear. The pacing was so fast that the protagonist found a civilization, escaped prison with several other people, introduced democracy, and overthrew the monarchy in the space of 20 pages. And I was still bored. I honestly cannot find anything to like about this. I only bothered to finish it because it's so short. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone--not that anyone was looking to read this obscure thing, anyway.

#ReadDownYourBookshelf verdict: I'm absolutely getting rid of this.