A review by just_fighting_censorship
The Robot King by Brian Selznick

2.0

It pains me to give this book such a low review but, quite honestly, I was bored. The plot, characters, and setting, were all secondary to the atmosphere and emotion of the book, therefore I think the story deserved to be told through pictures rather than words. As I was reading I thought to myself, how much better would this be if it were a wordless book? The answer is it could have been a 4 or 5 star book. I think that the surrealist magic of the story would have been more pronounced and make a bigger impact if Selznick's beautiful and detailed pictures told the story instead. The feeling of this story reminds me of some of my favorite wordless books- [b:Tuesday|97860|Tuesday|David Wiesner|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1328870556s/97860.jpg|3036058], [b:Journey|17262290|Journey|Aaron Becker|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1367256642s/17262290.jpg|23859090], and [b:Sector 7|29313|Sector 7|David Wiesner|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1348553472s/29313.jpg|29775]. I cannot imagine any of these magical stories being told in any other way. Brian Sleznick's artwork is strong and enchanting but his writing is boring and clumsy, he should play to his strengths but instead he wasted a good story.

Skip this one and read [b:The Invention of Hugo Cabret|9673436|The Invention of Hugo Cabret|Brian Selznick|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1327879761s/9673436.jpg|527941] instead.