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A review by bergelicious818
Munmun by Jesse Andrews
1.0
Thank you to Goodreads and Amulet Books for hosting a giveaway for this ARC of MunMun!
MunMun was an extremely disappointing read and definitely not the book for me. After reading the synopsis, I was super excited! It's a great concept, the idea that your wealth directly impacts your physical size is not something I've seen before. I thought that this books focus on two of the books smallest citizens could make for a very interesting plot. The problem is, there was no plot.
The beginning of MunMun focuses on Warner and his sister Prayer, two of the poorest class of citizens, the Littlepoors. They are about the size of rats, with no munmun (money) to their names, their father having been stepped on and crushed to death by a bigger citizen and their mother having been permanently crippled by a cat. Warner and Prayer set out to find a way to scale up, that is, get more munmuns to increase their physical size. But honestly, that's really it. Things happen in the story, but its not really following any sort of plot or storyline, rather the reader is just kind of drifting along, following the life of Warner the Littlepoor. I absolutely hated this aspect of the book, as it made the story feel flat and pointless. The book had two different "worlds", dreamworld and lifeanddeath world. Dreamworld had the potential to be really interesting, but it wasn't really explained very well. In addition, the book was divided into sections, which also seemed pretty pointless to me.
As far as characters go, the story focuses heavily on Warner and his development, as he is around 13 when the story begins and in his mid to late 20s when the story ends. His development is complex and interesting, which I appreciated, but the trade off for this is that the side characters were all extremely flat (with the exception of Prayer, who exhibited some development, but not much).
The other thing I couldn't stand about this book was the way it was actually written. Littlepoors are not given an education. Since this book was from Warner's point of view, it reflected that. The only problem is that the writing completely takes the reader out of the story, forcing the reader to try to decipher what is actually being said or talked about. For example, there are frequent mentions of Yewess being the country that they live in. If you think about it for a second, this is obviously the U.S., but if you are just reading, you don't immediately understand this. Other things like "Eat" (east), "Wet" (west), again drawn the reader out of the story. Some characters are even described as actually saying "lol" or "lmao", which was very odd. The book frequently had words conjoined together for no apparent reason, such as "kidjail" and "familydinner", which, again, destroyed the flow of the story.
Long story short, MunMun had a cool concept and did provide some great commentary on wealth in society and how the poor are treated compared to the rich. That was the only aspect of this story that I really enjoyed. The world building, character development and writing style felt flat, underdeveloped and awkward, and unfortunately, destroyed the potential this book held.
MunMun was an extremely disappointing read and definitely not the book for me. After reading the synopsis, I was super excited! It's a great concept, the idea that your wealth directly impacts your physical size is not something I've seen before. I thought that this books focus on two of the books smallest citizens could make for a very interesting plot. The problem is, there was no plot.
The beginning of MunMun focuses on Warner and his sister Prayer, two of the poorest class of citizens, the Littlepoors. They are about the size of rats, with no munmun (money) to their names, their father having been stepped on and crushed to death by a bigger citizen and their mother having been permanently crippled by a cat. Warner and Prayer set out to find a way to scale up, that is, get more munmuns to increase their physical size. But honestly, that's really it. Things happen in the story, but its not really following any sort of plot or storyline, rather the reader is just kind of drifting along, following the life of Warner the Littlepoor. I absolutely hated this aspect of the book, as it made the story feel flat and pointless. The book had two different "worlds", dreamworld and lifeanddeath world. Dreamworld had the potential to be really interesting, but it wasn't really explained very well. In addition, the book was divided into sections, which also seemed pretty pointless to me.
As far as characters go, the story focuses heavily on Warner and his development, as he is around 13 when the story begins and in his mid to late 20s when the story ends. His development is complex and interesting, which I appreciated, but the trade off for this is that the side characters were all extremely flat (with the exception of Prayer, who exhibited some development, but not much).
The other thing I couldn't stand about this book was the way it was actually written. Littlepoors are not given an education. Since this book was from Warner's point of view, it reflected that. The only problem is that the writing completely takes the reader out of the story, forcing the reader to try to decipher what is actually being said or talked about. For example, there are frequent mentions of Yewess being the country that they live in. If you think about it for a second, this is obviously the U.S., but if you are just reading, you don't immediately understand this. Other things like "Eat" (east), "Wet" (west), again drawn the reader out of the story. Some characters are even described as actually saying "lol" or "lmao", which was very odd. The book frequently had words conjoined together for no apparent reason, such as "kidjail" and "familydinner", which, again, destroyed the flow of the story.
Long story short, MunMun had a cool concept and did provide some great commentary on wealth in society and how the poor are treated compared to the rich. That was the only aspect of this story that I really enjoyed. The world building, character development and writing style felt flat, underdeveloped and awkward, and unfortunately, destroyed the potential this book held.