Monday 28 October 2013

More Than This- Patrick Ness Review

The only other Patrick Ness book I had read before this was A Monster Calls which was of course very different to his other books so I didn't know what to expect from More Than This. The book starts off and no-one really knows what's going on (including our main character, Seth) and for the entire first act he was on his own and trying to figure out where he is. So Seth is from England and he moved to America about eight years ago. So he figures out that this strange place he's woke up in is England and the house he was drawn to was his old one. He goes into his old house and everything is still there including everything that came with them to America. The cupboards and supermarkets are full of mouldy foods and there is no electricity anywhere. So I found this part to be particularly exciting I was buzzing to find out what an earth was going on. I always felt for Seth through out the book but I often found him to be a bit naïve. I thought the vivid dreams he had from his life before the drowning incident where a really clever way of keeping it (how would you say?) not dull. Without the dreams I probably would have gotten bored of himat looking around the house, eating tinned soup and every so often going into the garden for a pee. NOW FOR SPOILERS!! So when Seth was running along (as you do) and he saw the black van I jumped a bit because by this point I (the reader) was completely convinced he was alone in what Seth was calling “hell”. Then he met Regine and Tomasz and some questions were answered! In the dream Seth had when he was with Gudmund and it was revealed to us that Seth was in fact gay my reaction was “oh” I just don't see these thing coming! I thought it was great (and Patrick Ness talked about this when I met him) that we had a gay protagonist and it really wasn't a big deal. Often in a book if a character is gay then that is the main focus on the book and it changes everything but here it was different we had a dystopian book where the lead protagonist just so happened to be gay. In some ways Seth being gay was what made this not a romance book because it meant there wasn't a chance of him falling for Regine and lets face it I didn't see him swooning over Tomasz. I thought it started to get a bit repetitive towards the end and the kept killing the driver then he kept coming back to life. When I went to the signing he talked about the importance of the last line in a book and I have to say that the last line in More Than This was spiffing. I will be back shortly with a review of Withering Tights by Louise Rennison. Love Always, Freya

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