Friday 23 March 2012

Wild Card 3

The Knife Of Never Letting Go


Now a lot of people have said this book is amazing; that it is the book of the century and everyone should love it unless the book comes to life and ruins everything you love. If that happens then you have a reasonable excuse to dislike it. But apart from that then you must love it, love it, love it. Everyone I know has said this, including my parents. But to be perfectly honest I don’t see what all the fuss is about.


Now don’t get me wrong OK, I liked the book. But it just isn’t as amazing as everyone was saying it was. It had some good positives and some annoying negatives (I will go over these in a minute). So while the book didn’t live up to what it was built up to, it did have its moments.
Let’s start with the positives: First I want to say that the idea that the story had was simply fantastic. Coming to a new world to find that it has a chemical that broadcasts your thoughts to everyone? Genius! And the characters in it are so well written I was jealous that I would have to wait 10 years to get close to that sort of writing.

However. The book did do a few things that I hated. The first is how stupid the people were when it came to plans. I mean the settler plan. Come on. 20 odd villages and not one mechanic that can fix a spaceship. Not ONE?! No way of contacting them when the purpose of these people was to check it out and then CONTACT THEM! That was a bit of a design flaw don’t you think?


Also the book did what How To Be Topp did: deliberately misspell words. I HATE that.  SHAME ON YOU STORY! But apart from those rather large cons the book does alright on my scale. I will give the book 71/100 for excellent story writing and good execution of an idea.
This is the last challenge review I am doing so when I next post something I hope to be £10 richer.

Jay Writes
Look guys - it's the last review of the 50! 
It came as no surprise to us that Luke used his final Wild Card to avoid reading Little Women. That's the one I'd pegged from the start as the least likely to appeal to him. Instead, we chose the start of an award-winning trilogy of modern YA fiction. 
I hope Luke is immensely proud of himself for finishing this challenge. We're all chuffed to bits!

10 comments:

  1. I'm really impressed Luke. My daughter is about your age and a voracious reader but very set in her ways. I cant imagine her choosing to go out of her comfort zone and read all of these.

    sarah (sebbie)

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  2. Well done Luke, quite an achievement. 50 books read, so many more to discover.

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  3. I enjoyed this book and read the trilogy but the series suffered by the end. Anyway, well done Luke. This is an achievement to be proud of. Now, maybe it's time to hit the ball back into the adults court. I know your Mum and Dad have read most books that have ever been published ;-) but there are a lot parents out there that aren't quite so widely read. Have you thought of producing a list of books that adults should read in order to understand what good children's fiction is like from your perspective? Maybe your top 10 from this list. I'd give it a go if you did. I find YA fiction usually more appealing than literary fiction anyway. Give it a thought and let me know.
    Russell (Allen)

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  4. Congratulations on your challenge. Way to go.

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  5. Heather (in NZ)23 March 2012 at 20:52

    Way to go Luke! I'm very impressed indeed- will show Poppy this morning and see if she feels inspired ...

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  6. Massive well done on the challenge Luke. I read loads but reading for book group (where I had my books chosen for me by someone else) really tough. It was a great thing to do though and made me read stuff I'd never have touched. Like you, some I loved, some I hated and most I agreed with myself that were probably not for me, but the ones I loved made all the rest worthwhile.

    What are you planning to spend the tenner on?

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    1. Probably something from Games workshop.

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  7. I'm so impressed that you've done this, such a cool idea too.

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    1. Well done Luke! Absolutely brilliant (and I'm speaking as someone who has been meaning for a long time to read this book...)

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  8. sorry I've managed to put my comment in the wrong place but anyhow you'll get the message...

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