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circusiana 's review for:
The Doldrums
by Nicholas Gannon
lighthearted
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Spoilers? If you can even be spoiled for a book where (spoiler alert) very little happens and nothing is revealed.
I am editing this review to say the following: After a friend of mine read this book and found the same problems I did, I went to research the deal on Publishers Marketplace and was appalled to find out that this was sold in a major two-book deal. That's at least $500k. For one book that is just a vague prologue, really, and for another that I will definitely not be reading because this should have been one book so that there was actual momentum.
Surely no one thought this was going to compare to Brian Selznick, right?
Back to the review: Okay, I wanted to give it two stars because the illustrations were competent enough, but they didn't help add any intensity to the story and the story was a huge, huge problem. So though the palette was nice and the lighting was nice, I just... don't think of them. I think of how I was cheated out of a story.
This is a one star book. Not because of anything particularly horrific or bad, but because I just didn't get a sense that anything... happened. The title must reflect the feeling you're supposed to get while reading this for 340 pages, because otherwise it doesn't make much sense. Yes, Oliver's father's paper is The Doldrums Press, but other than that, it's just kind of arbitrary.
Because, okay, yes, Archer is locked in his house... Only in the sense that he's allowed out of it for school (where he goes out on the town to meet with Adelaide and Oliver) and freely continues sneaking to visit his two child neighbors. Almost every day. Without ever being caught.
So, really, he's certainly not trapped.
Also, I do not understand, and it is never fully justified, why Archer's mother decides to "trap" her young son inside, and why his father just goes along with it. I mean, it makes no sense at all. His grandparents were presumed lost on an iceberg. How a nine to eleven-year-old boy would meet a similar fate and therefore need to be locked up (except for school) is beyond me. His mother doesn't seem irrational or upset. She doesn't even seem to like Archer's grandparents, for reasons vaguely explained in the last chapter.
Overall, Archer's being trapped feels very forced. His mother never even checks on him, allowing him to journey across town with his friends, and return, without being noticed.
Since we never find out anything substantial regarding Archer's grandparents, I guess the real antagonist in the novel is Aunt Marge Trunchbull Mrs. Margery Murkley? Who is really a mishmash of other, better-developed nasty characters and serves less of a purpose.
Because I didn't feel that Archer was really trapped, and that there weren't any real antagonists that might really do something to interfere with plans that were so outlandish and only developed in the last third of the book, I didn't feel any tension.
In fact, at first I thought, okay, the book will cover the summer and Archer's attempts to get out of the house. But no, summer ends very quickly and he never gets out of the house (well, with permission) and it's never addressed again. We instead move into the new school year and the arrival of Mrs. Murkley/Aunt Marge/Trunchbull, who may or may not have a past with the Nice Librarian Character (I was going to laugh hysterically if it was revealed they were related... but nothing was revealed).
Let's just chronicle the things that were not revealed in this 340 page book:
1.) Precisely why Ralph and Rachel Helmsley were not welcome in their own house, to visit their grandson. They are seemingly just a pair of explorers who got lost. A quick paragraph in the final chapter, vaguely talking about how OTHER people in Ralph and Rachel's circle were... strange? isn't enough to make things satisfying. I mean, there's no allusion to magical worlds or nefarious associations, apart from two old sea dog types who knew them.
2.) Mrs. Marge Murkley Trunchbull's past, regarding why she left her previous school.
3.) What her relationship may or may not be with the librarian.
Okay, so, those are actually the only mysterious plot points in the novel. And not one of them was given a satisfactory explanation.
I've said it before and I'm going to say it again: there is a serious First Novel of a Series problem going on in current MG and YA. Regardless of a novel's series potential, it needs to stand alone, with just enough left to make the reader wonder what will happen next. The reader should not be reading onward because the author never explained what was going on in the first book.
That's not how this works! That's not how any of this works!
Think about the first Harry Potter book. It ends very neatly. Yes, obviously we know the Voldemort problem isn't really solved, and Dumbledore gives us answers that we only later learn are half-truths. But we don't feel they are half-truths at the time. Rowling is not trying to create cliffhangers. Why Harry survived, for example, is provided to us. Voldemort is vanquished for the second time. The school year ends. The reader may or may not want to see what happens in the second year, but everything they read in the first book was wrapped up.
Think about if, instead, the first HP book was entirely about the Dursleys being paranoid about Harry and Harry wondering why he does these weird, seemingly magical things. Then, in the final chapter, Hagrid appears and the Dursleys are forced to vaguely allude that they know something is going on but we still never find out what Harry is. And then it ends.
I feel like this is the structure being used to start series now, and it's making me crazy.
I am editing this review to say the following: After a friend of mine read this book and found the same problems I did, I went to research the deal on Publishers Marketplace and was appalled to find out that this was sold in a major two-book deal. That's at least $500k. For one book that is just a vague prologue, really, and for another that I will definitely not be reading because this should have been one book so that there was actual momentum.
Surely no one thought this was going to compare to Brian Selznick, right?
Back to the review: Okay, I wanted to give it two stars because the illustrations were competent enough, but they didn't help add any intensity to the story and the story was a huge, huge problem. So though the palette was nice and the lighting was nice, I just... don't think of them. I think of how I was cheated out of a story.
This is a one star book. Not because of anything particularly horrific or bad, but because I just didn't get a sense that anything... happened. The title must reflect the feeling you're supposed to get while reading this for 340 pages, because otherwise it doesn't make much sense. Yes, Oliver's father's paper is The Doldrums Press, but other than that, it's just kind of arbitrary.
Because, okay, yes, Archer is locked in his house... Only in the sense that he's allowed out of it for school (where he goes out on the town to meet with Adelaide and Oliver) and freely continues sneaking to visit his two child neighbors. Almost every day. Without ever being caught.
So, really, he's certainly not trapped.
Also, I do not understand, and it is never fully justified, why Archer's mother decides to "trap" her young son inside, and why his father just goes along with it. I mean, it makes no sense at all. His grandparents were presumed lost on an iceberg. How a nine to eleven-year-old boy would meet a similar fate and therefore need to be locked up (except for school) is beyond me. His mother doesn't seem irrational or upset. She doesn't even seem to like Archer's grandparents, for reasons vaguely explained in the last chapter.
Overall, Archer's being trapped feels very forced. His mother never even checks on him, allowing him to journey across town with his friends, and return, without being noticed.
Since we never find out anything substantial regarding Archer's grandparents, I guess the real antagonist in the novel is Aunt Marge Trunchbull Mrs. Margery Murkley? Who is really a mishmash of other, better-developed nasty characters and serves less of a purpose.
Because I didn't feel that Archer was really trapped, and that there weren't any real antagonists that might really do something to interfere with plans that were so outlandish and only developed in the last third of the book, I didn't feel any tension.
In fact, at first I thought, okay, the book will cover the summer and Archer's attempts to get out of the house. But no, summer ends very quickly and he never gets out of the house (well, with permission) and it's never addressed again. We instead move into the new school year and the arrival of Mrs. Murkley/Aunt Marge/Trunchbull, who may or may not have a past with the Nice Librarian Character (I was going to laugh hysterically if it was revealed they were related... but nothing was revealed).
Let's just chronicle the things that were not revealed in this 340 page book:
1.) Precisely why Ralph and Rachel Helmsley were not welcome in their own house, to visit their grandson. They are seemingly just a pair of explorers who got lost. A quick paragraph in the final chapter, vaguely talking about how OTHER people in Ralph and Rachel's circle were... strange? isn't enough to make things satisfying. I mean, there's no allusion to magical worlds or nefarious associations, apart from two old sea dog types who knew them.
2.) Mrs. Marge Murkley Trunchbull's past, regarding why she left her previous school.
3.) What her relationship may or may not be with the librarian.
Okay, so, those are actually the only mysterious plot points in the novel. And not one of them was given a satisfactory explanation.
I've said it before and I'm going to say it again: there is a serious First Novel of a Series problem going on in current MG and YA. Regardless of a novel's series potential, it needs to stand alone, with just enough left to make the reader wonder what will happen next. The reader should not be reading onward because the author never explained what was going on in the first book.
That's not how this works! That's not how any of this works!
Think about the first Harry Potter book. It ends very neatly. Yes, obviously we know the Voldemort problem isn't really solved, and Dumbledore gives us answers that we only later learn are half-truths. But we don't feel they are half-truths at the time. Rowling is not trying to create cliffhangers. Why Harry survived, for example, is provided to us. Voldemort is vanquished for the second time. The school year ends. The reader may or may not want to see what happens in the second year, but everything they read in the first book was wrapped up.
Think about if, instead, the first HP book was entirely about the Dursleys being paranoid about Harry and Harry wondering why he does these weird, seemingly magical things. Then, in the final chapter, Hagrid appears and the Dursleys are forced to vaguely allude that they know something is going on but we still never find out what Harry is. And then it ends.
I feel like this is the structure being used to start series now, and it's making me crazy.