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charburlingame 's review for:
The Scorpio Races
by Maggie Stiefvater
This was my first venture into YA fantasy in a long time, and it’s coming with mixed feelings.
I’m not sure how much to put aside due to my understanding of the nature of YA: the dramatic writing, tropey plot points, and stereotypical characters. I think these things aside, it was an entertaining story that gave me a few little twists that kept my interest.
That being said, it took about 150 pages for me to warm up to the style. I think if I hadn’t been reading this for book club, I may not have finished. The pacing of the story in general felt drawn out to me: every scene was treated with equal weight and length, which I didn’t think was effective. 400 pages felt a little too long for me, but I felt the writing and story really improved the more I read.
If it weren’t for chapter titles indicating character names, the switching point of views would have been harder to follow. Without any obvious indicators, I didn’t feel that Sean or Kate had distinct enough voices to flesh out their characters. But they have neat moments, and there are a lot of elements of this story that could have been really cool had they been given more space: Kate’s love for the island and rebellion against its customs, her brother Gabe’s need to leave it, the history of their island, the conflict between Sean and his employer (or even the class aspect of most of these conflicts more generally).
All in all, it was more of a miss than a hit for me, but ended up being a decent read regardless.
I’m not sure how much to put aside due to my understanding of the nature of YA: the dramatic writing, tropey plot points, and stereotypical characters. I think these things aside, it was an entertaining story that gave me a few little twists that kept my interest.
That being said, it took about 150 pages for me to warm up to the style. I think if I hadn’t been reading this for book club, I may not have finished. The pacing of the story in general felt drawn out to me: every scene was treated with equal weight and length, which I didn’t think was effective. 400 pages felt a little too long for me, but I felt the writing and story really improved the more I read.
If it weren’t for chapter titles indicating character names, the switching point of views would have been harder to follow. Without any obvious indicators, I didn’t feel that Sean or Kate had distinct enough voices to flesh out their characters. But they have neat moments, and there are a lot of elements of this story that could have been really cool had they been given more space: Kate’s love for the island and rebellion against its customs, her brother Gabe’s need to leave it, the history of their island, the conflict between Sean and his employer (or even the class aspect of most of these conflicts more generally).
All in all, it was more of a miss than a hit for me, but ended up being a decent read regardless.