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vorticella's reviews
18 reviews
The Mystery of Flight 2222 by Thomas J. Neviaser
1.0
Content Warnings:
Rep: None
The Mystery of Flight 2222 by Thomas Neviaser is a survival story about 9 plane crash survivors living on their plane's raft for 52 days forced to overcome starvation, rough seas, pirates, declining mental health and each other. It’s a simple idea done time and time again. There’s no reinventing the wheel with plane crash stories. Unfortunately, Neviaser attempts to do this and fails miserably at it.
Don’t get me wrong; this isn’t a bad survival book. This novel is incredibly suspenseful. I read it in three sittings and was barely able to put it down. The author certainly is a skilled writer. You’re scared for these characters. Some portions are utterly unpredictable, while others are written beautifully. Neviaser is not a bad writer which is disappointing because of how lackluster the rest of this book is.
As a survival plane crash story about our main character Frank holding onto hope to get back to his wife and unborn child, this would have been an excellent story. Unfortunately, that’s not what Neviaser decided to do. He’s trying to make a story about everyone on the raft but only focuses on Frank. Then he tries to make a story where we’re supposed to care about what happens to everyone, but he doesn’t give us anything to care about. With Frank, we had beautifully written dreams about his life back at home. Him having dinner with his wife and being distraught when he realizes he’s back on the raft. We don’t get any sort of character establishment nor development for anyone else, so why should we care about them?
Lastly, Neviaser attempts to throw together a lazy ending that provides us with this backstory. One that contradicts the characters that have already been established. He’s supposed to set up these characters during the novel, not after it. It’s writing 101: show, don’t tell. This novel is a mess. It’s like it can't decide what it wants to be. With the snippets of backstory, we get about the characters and how character driven it is you would think that we’d get to actually know something about them. We only get tidbits of information about anyone besides Frank despite one of the people we began the novel with being Helen. I’m sure he added these backstories in an attempt to fix this mistake, but it's too little too late in my opinion.
Helen is the only character other than Frank that has any semblance of a personality. Everyone else is cardboard; acting exactly as you’d expect them too. They act more like props than like people; serving as plot devices for Frank to get off the raft. The characters are as follows. Homer, the obnoxious brat; Otto, the fat guy; Maxine, the old woman; Kimberly, the crazy one; Soo mi and Yuto (basically one character), the couple; and Irving, the swiss army knife. That’s how they are and how they’ll stay for the duration of the novel. Even these basic characters are written poorly. Like how all the women are being painted as useless. Like they can’t do anything, but cry and be scared despite that going against how they were set up. Or Soo mi being described as Asian despite her husband being described as Japanese; she gets no such description. Is she Korean, Taiwanese, Indian, Filipino? Another sign of the sometimes lazy writing in this novel.
Earlier in this review, I said some of the scenes were utterly unpredictable; I said some for a reason. Most of this novel is riddled with Deus Ex Machina moments. Like inconvenient characters dying and food quite literally falling onto their raft. Even one of the base ideas of the book – the people Frank and Helen chose for a game they were playing on the plane being the only ones to survive the plane crash and having the exact identities the two guessed they would have – stretched my suspension of disbelief immensely. These moments just take away from the book and being able to know what happens next because of it spoils the experience for me.
The Mystery of Flight 2222 had potential but unfortunately was a major let down. If Thomas Neviaser just chose what he wanted the write about – a survival story about a man wanting to get home to his family or the story of bad people getting what’s coming to them – then this could have worked. Instead, he tried to do both and failed at both. Therefore, I give this novel a 2.5 out of 5. It has its moments like the suspense or the empathy we feel for Frank in wanting him to get back to his pregnant wife, but that can’t make up for the muddled mess that is The Mystery of Flight 2222.
Spoiler
Cannibalism, kidnapping, plane crashRep: None
The Mystery of Flight 2222 by Thomas Neviaser is a survival story about 9 plane crash survivors living on their plane's raft for 52 days forced to overcome starvation, rough seas, pirates, declining mental health and each other. It’s a simple idea done time and time again. There’s no reinventing the wheel with plane crash stories. Unfortunately, Neviaser attempts to do this and fails miserably at it.
Don’t get me wrong; this isn’t a bad survival book. This novel is incredibly suspenseful. I read it in three sittings and was barely able to put it down. The author certainly is a skilled writer. You’re scared for these characters. Some portions are utterly unpredictable, while others are written beautifully. Neviaser is not a bad writer which is disappointing because of how lackluster the rest of this book is.
As a survival plane crash story about our main character Frank holding onto hope to get back to his wife and unborn child, this would have been an excellent story. Unfortunately, that’s not what Neviaser decided to do. He’s trying to make a story about everyone on the raft but only focuses on Frank. Then he tries to make a story where we’re supposed to care about what happens to everyone, but he doesn’t give us anything to care about. With Frank, we had beautifully written dreams about his life back at home. Him having dinner with his wife and being distraught when he realizes he’s back on the raft. We don’t get any sort of character establishment nor development for anyone else, so why should we care about them?
Lastly, Neviaser attempts to throw together a lazy ending that provides us with this backstory. One that contradicts the characters that have already been established. He’s supposed to set up these characters during the novel, not after it. It’s writing 101: show, don’t tell. This novel is a mess. It’s like it can't decide what it wants to be. With the snippets of backstory, we get about the characters and how character driven it is you would think that we’d get to actually know something about them. We only get tidbits of information about anyone besides Frank despite one of the people we began the novel with being Helen. I’m sure he added these backstories in an attempt to fix this mistake, but it's too little too late in my opinion.
Helen is the only character other than Frank that has any semblance of a personality. Everyone else is cardboard; acting exactly as you’d expect them too. They act more like props than like people; serving as plot devices for Frank to get off the raft. The characters are as follows. Homer, the obnoxious brat; Otto, the fat guy; Maxine, the old woman; Kimberly, the crazy one; Soo mi and Yuto (basically one character), the couple; and Irving, the swiss army knife. That’s how they are and how they’ll stay for the duration of the novel. Even these basic characters are written poorly. Like how all the women are being painted as useless. Like they can’t do anything, but cry and be scared despite that going against how they were set up. Or Soo mi being described as Asian despite her husband being described as Japanese; she gets no such description. Is she Korean, Taiwanese, Indian, Filipino? Another sign of the sometimes lazy writing in this novel.
Earlier in this review, I said some of the scenes were utterly unpredictable; I said some for a reason. Most of this novel is riddled with Deus Ex Machina moments. Like inconvenient characters dying and food quite literally falling onto their raft. Even one of the base ideas of the book – the people Frank and Helen chose for a game they were playing on the plane being the only ones to survive the plane crash and having the exact identities the two guessed they would have – stretched my suspension of disbelief immensely. These moments just take away from the book and being able to know what happens next because of it spoils the experience for me.
The Mystery of Flight 2222 had potential but unfortunately was a major let down. If Thomas Neviaser just chose what he wanted the write about – a survival story about a man wanting to get home to his family or the story of bad people getting what’s coming to them – then this could have worked. Instead, he tried to do both and failed at both. Therefore, I give this novel a 2.5 out of 5. It has its moments like the suspense or the empathy we feel for Frank in wanting him to get back to his pregnant wife, but that can’t make up for the muddled mess that is The Mystery of Flight 2222.
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
5.0
It was really good and I nearly cried. Learned a lot about the history of Afghanistan too.
Trapped by Bella Donnis, Sally Bryan
1.0
Read this expecting a cute trapped together cabin book and ended up with a super creepy, possessive and non-consensual relationship where characters are manipulated to do sexual acts. Hell no. Save yourself the time and emotional energy and read something else.
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