Marissa Burt

I was very excited by the premise of this book, which sounded like (as the blurb on the back said) The Neverending Story meets Inkheart. In a very meta-fantasy setup, our young heroine is mysteriously transported to a different world, a strange place where stories are created. All of the kids in this world go to school to learn to be character types (the first kids she meets are studying to be a Hero and a Lady). But what is this girl from our world doing in the land of Story? Hold on, friends, for it's going to get very complicated.

A book this long (400 pages) and twisting demands a lot from young readers. We know lots of kids can handle it because we've seen them gobble up enormously long and complicated fantasy books before (in the millions). Unfortunately, though this book feels like it wants to join those ranks, I don't think it has the right stuff.

Long, twisting fantasies are at at their best when the reader feels that I-can't-put-it-down feeling. I had to struggle to keep reading this. Everything just fell flat for me, from the talking cat to the evil Elton to the very vanilla main characters. When I was 100 pages in and still didn't feel the least bit concerned about what was going on, I skipped to the end to try to decide if I should keep going. What I found was clear evidence that this is meant to the be the first in a series. I groaned inwardly and set the book aside.

This just goes to show that a good idea good writing does not always equal a good book. There's some X factor that's missing here. Or maybe the long, complicated juvenile fantasy genre is finally dying a death from a thousand small cuts. You water it down and water it down, and it's just not as special as it once was. (Though, to be fair, I'm certainly over-dramatizing, as I did love last year's [b:The Emerald Atlas|8619814|The Emerald Atlas (The Books of Beginning, #1)|John Stephens|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1320406687s/8619814.jpg|13490451].)… (meer)

Una Fairchild has released the Enemy, and now she needs to do what she can to fix the situation in Story. The Enemy wants to rewrite the future of Story, and the Resistance is doing what they can to find the King and prevent the Enemy from succeeding. Snow and her mother, Una, and Peter all have their separate missions to do what they can to learn more about Story’s history and to save its future for everyone. The help of the mysterious Kai gets them to an all-out battle to rescue the Muses and restore the True King to the throne of story. Along the way, Una learns more about her own past and why she has come to Story.

In spite of Una’s complicated past and how difficult that should be for her, the story has a distinct lack of emotion about that or anything else. The characters blend together, and telling the story from different perspectives does nothing to help add some individuality and spark to them. The ending is full of dramatic coincidences. If the reader does not read Storybound shortly before reading this book, it will likely be difficult to remember all of the details about how Story works because of how many threads there are going through the story. The idea behind the book is fun, but the writing itself leaves many things to be desire.… (meer)