I haven't read any of this book for a long while. In an attempt to cut down my Currently-reading list, I gave this another go. It didn't get better. The thing is, the whole time I was reading it I felt like I've read this before. I even knew what was going to happen in certain situations. I even thought at one point that maybe I've read it, but that's impossible. However, in a way I have read it.
I always loved fantasy, fairy tales that have princes and princesses. I still do. I occasionally watch fairy tale movies intended for kids. In my 32 years, I've seen a lot of stories. That's exactly the problem with this book. It's good if the reader is a young person, just switching over from the Grimm fairy tales to something else. This will feel familiar. However, to me, I've read this all. There is just nothing new or surprising, or witty about the story. It's like a mish-mash of things that I've read before in countless others. I just feel bored.
I've read stories intended for people less than half my age. I enjoyed the Percy Jackson series, and I can't help comparing it to this book. While Percy Jackson draws from Greek mythology, it manages to update it, and to make me want to read that version of the stories. They are not unfamiliar to me. At around the age of 10 I got into ancient mythologies. I read a lot about them, read whole collections of stories. The things in Percy Jackson were familiar this way. However, the way they were twisted around kept them from just being the same. In The Iron King the concepts, the events are just nothing new. Therefore, I cannot go on with reading this book. I've promised to myself a while ago that I'm not going to read anything that I don't want to.
The writing itself is good. There is nothing off-putting about it. The characters are also familiar, very cliché. The problem is the unoriginality of it all.
No comments:
Post a Comment