by Ransom Riggs
4 Stars
A family tragedy sends
sixteen-year-old Jacob Portman looking for answers. What he finds is a
mysterious island off the coast of Wales, on that island an abandoned and
crumbling orphanage, and beneath the ruins of that orphanage a collection of
peculiar photographs. He’ll soon discover that the children in the
photographs—a girl who seems to levitate, another that juggles fire, an
invisible boy—were more than just peculiar. They might have been powerful. They
might have been hunted. They might, impossible though it may sound, still be
alive.
***
I must begin by saying that Ransom Riggs’ writing really impressed me. He has a strong vocabulary, is very witty, and has a clever way of wording things. Unfortunately, I think his writing suffers an annoying fate most readers will be familiar with; it’s too descriptive at the beginning, which means he takes a long time to get into the story. And not descriptive enough at the end, which results in a rushed climax that’s hard to follow. Regarding the pictures, I was a little conflicted. On the one hand, I thought taking a collection of totally unrelated photographs and stringing them together in a single narrative was wondrously imaginative. On the other, I felt slightly disconnected from the characters in this book, knowing the photos of them were not really them. I think this is made worse by the fact that, in my opinion, Riggs fails to add much depth to any of the children besides Jacob and Emma (I really couldn’t tell the difference between Hugh, Enoch, Millard, and Horace until I watched the movie). I hope Riggs develops these personalities more in the second book. I tend to be overly critical in my reviews, but I still really enjoyed this book. Would definitely recommend!
Catey F.
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