A review by librarianryan
Doña Quixote: Rise of the Knight by Rey Terciero

Did not finish book.

adventurous dark emotional slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

 

I really wanted to like this, but I am DNFing at 25%. I imagine this book was going to be a modern retelling of Dan Quixote but in the first quarter of the book we have a young woman and her grandfather telling her stories about being a knight. Everybody considers him crazy both in his family and around his neighborhood. Eight years later, Lucia is still into the ideas of knights in shining armor and grand adventures. This that gets her into trouble. Her age is hard to guess probably between 13 and 15 considering the story starts out eight years ago. I think the reason that the first quarter of this book annoys me is that Lucia is always in trouble. She’s in trouble for being an imaginative child. She’s in trouble for being rambunctious. And then the adults around here are just so annoying. There’s one scene where Lucy it goes to do her knightly business and help somebody who’s being bullied, she runs into a water tower and causes it to fall over. This gets her in trouble with the mayor, which gets her in trouble with her parents, and her parents have to do time volunteering to help pay for the mayors car that was hurt destroyed by the falling water tower. At the same time they also have to hide Lucia’s grandmother, who is undocumented. What annoys me about this book is there is no way one child running into a water tower lake can cause the water tower to fall. If it did, they would be a much bigger problem and the mayor wouldn’t be mad at the parents. Parents will be suing the mayor. I went into this book expecting an out of this world, crazy adventure tale, but this book is already unbelievable and far-fetched in the most annoying way. I have no desire to finish this tail. The world is coded as evil and cruel and nothing good.  If that is the case, why would it be worth saving.