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telthor 's review for:
The Hazel Wood
by Melissa Albert
3, with an extra star for the AMAZING audiobook narrator.
I feel like this book started out extraordinarily well, with sly secret holding and hints and subtle tastes of urban magic. But at perhaps the halfway point, when the story twists to become more of a straight fantasy, with traveling through mysterious woods and directly interacting with Stories, my attention began to wander. Information was told at me by the mysterious old women, and from then on for some reason I could never recapture the same interest I had before. All the cards had been laid out on the table and somehow all the tension dripped out of it for me at that point. It was better when it was holding its secrets close, I think.
The idea is deliciously fun, reminding me wholeheartedly and happily of Tell Tale Games's The Wolf Among Us (which is itself based on a comic but I haven't read it yet, so shush). But I never found myself as engaged in the characters as I needed to be, so that when characters died or looped around and came back again for resolutions and the like I never felt the impact I should have.
Still. The first half is a total joy, and I loooove the audiobook narrator. It just meanders too heavily in the second half, with too little impact and too few secrets.
Also, huzzah for not ending up with the boy in the end. Her doofy mooning over him feels bizarre, but the book at least doesn't twist up to try and force it to work when it shouldn't. So that's a plus.
I feel like this book started out extraordinarily well, with sly secret holding and hints and subtle tastes of urban magic. But at perhaps the halfway point, when the story twists to become more of a straight fantasy, with traveling through mysterious woods and directly interacting with Stories, my attention began to wander. Information was told at me by the mysterious old women, and from then on for some reason I could never recapture the same interest I had before. All the cards had been laid out on the table and somehow all the tension dripped out of it for me at that point. It was better when it was holding its secrets close, I think.
The idea is deliciously fun, reminding me wholeheartedly and happily of Tell Tale Games's The Wolf Among Us (which is itself based on a comic but I haven't read it yet, so shush). But I never found myself as engaged in the characters as I needed to be, so that when characters died or looped around and came back again for resolutions and the like I never felt the impact I should have.
Still. The first half is a total joy, and I loooove the audiobook narrator. It just meanders too heavily in the second half, with too little impact and too few secrets.
Also, huzzah for not ending up with the boy in the end. Her doofy mooning over him feels bizarre, but the book at least doesn't twist up to try and force it to work when it shouldn't. So that's a plus.