This book reads like the rushed first draft/outline of what might have been an excellent story with further work. It is frustratingly devoid of any deThis book reads like the rushed first draft/outline of what might have been an excellent story with further work. It is frustratingly devoid of any detail, consisting of very short chapters with minimal description and short, terse dialogue. Actually I wouldn't be surprised if Ness originally wrote this as a screenplay and then had to convert it into a novel.
At times I can see Ness striving for an interesting and unique emotional impact, but more often it is cheap and shallow, relying on a tired technique of concluding a section with a melodramatic sentence fragment for effect, such as, And he was never going to forgive her for that. or Like he was completely invisible to the rest of the world.
Worst of all, for every time Ness finds a new angle to approach the subject of grief and cancer, he deploys five shallow cliches, such as There is not always a good guy. Nor is there always a bad one. or perhaps, Stories are important, the monster said. They can be more important than anything. If they carry the truth. or Sometimes people need to lie to themselves most of all.
This stuff isn't exactly bad, it's just very easy, and its been said by hundreds of other books in hundreds of better ways. All of this serves to dampen the finale that could, with a few revisions, be quite emotional.
"A Monster Calls" is perhaps the best example of the weird gray area of Young Adult literature. It takes the form of a children's picture book (lots of big pictures with a few words on each page), and then tries to fill it with adult content about cancer and death and grief, thus inhabiting the twilight zone of hallmark gift cards, an unhappy marriage between childish simplicity and adult seriousness that just ends up feeling sentimental, unwilling to explore the depths of the emotions it raises.
And so while this book contains the kernel of some interesting ideas, Ness is attempting to fire his gun without loading it first. He wants us to feel these enormous dramatic emotions but hasn't earned it yet. We don't get to know these characters or understand them. It's a sketch of a rushed story that has yet to be filled in.
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From a humorous standpoint, I have to chuckle at John Green's cover blurb, "Patrick Ness is an insanely beautiful writer." Green's phrasing seems to indicate he thinks Ness himself is insanely beautiful. But maybe this is accurate. Ness's handsome visage is perhaps more worthy of the description than his writing.
I managed to get almost half-way through this book before I abandoned it. The main character was an empty shell, the writing was choppy and awkward, sI managed to get almost half-way through this book before I abandoned it. The main character was an empty shell, the writing was choppy and awkward, sacrificing any sense of beauty or flow for rigid, technically-oriented descriptions that made the book feel like a textbook, the plot was intermittently nonexistent and painfully slow. I was looking forwards to the heralded ideas about language that this book was so roundly praised for. The idea of a main character as a simile fired my imagination up! Instead I found the plot (up to where I read, at least) had little to nothing to do about the language, the main-characters status as a simile was unimportant, and overall, I was being treated to a sub-standard Star-Trek episode about humans getting along with aliens.
I suppose I was expecting something along the lines of Denis Villeneuve gorgeous masterwork, "Arrival", also a movie about language. But whereas the aspects of language in Arrival are crucial to the plot, language is incidental to "Embassytown". Whereas Louise in Arrival is a fascinating, optimistic character, Avice Benner Cho drifts blandly through life. It really takes talent to create a character this dull. The setting in "Embassytown" isn't even alien enough to provoke interest, it mostly takes place in a normal human city with normal human animals and normal human people.
To really be disappointing, a work needs to show potential, and specifically with the fascinating "Immer", Embassytown showed potential. I loved the idea that the signals ships were drawn to were actually lighthouses warning them to keep away. If Mievelle had explored in any detail the world he created, the language he created, this could've been a great book, but I struggled to find anything to enjoy, not characters, not plot, not ideas, not the setting, not the pacing, not even the writing, which was stiff and ugly, with nary a passage of lyricism or imagination to be found.
I hate to give out a one-star review, but there's really no alternative. This is a dull, formulaic science fiction drama with boring characters that ruins what potential it might have had if Mievelle had explored any of his ideas to any real end....more
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