A twenty something wight from the Philippines with a knack for words. A struggling writer and poet. A part-time frustrated lyricist. A full-time visceral reader.
I dont normally make honorary posts about TV shows (I dont even update my tumblr anymore.) But Cruel Summer reeled me in and I finished the show in about two days. I cant even remember the last time I was able to finish a TV series.
Mad props to the writers for writing this! This series deserves more love. It not only subverted the popular girl vs the nerdy girl trope, but it also handled sensitive topics with much nuance, showed us that there could be multiple truths and layers in one story, and the gradual unraveling of a sociopath.
What made it creepy was not the final episode, but how pathological liars get away with manipulating and not having to face the consequences.
I am speaking in behalf of all the readers who’ve guessed who the culprit was after finishing the second book. What makes a good mystery is that you have to deduce for yourself who the suspect is. If you can put two and two together without much mental gymnastics at all, then it means the story is predictable and the author isn’t like Agatha Christie at all.
The suspects all had to be either Quinn, Larry or Charles. When it was established that only the council knew about the codicil then my money was either on Charles or Quinn. When it was revealed in the finale that it was Charles, I wasn’t surprised at all. Of course, the culprit couldn’t be any one other than members of the faculty or staff.
The entire trilogy had good hooks, baits and red herrings, but the solution was flat and predictable. I would even like to apply as an editor for Maureen Johnson. Because aside from the fact that there were punctuation errors and ACTUAL PLOT HOLES (more of that in a bit), there were also quite a few loose ends that Maureen did not tie up. Like the implication that David and Ellie may be related to the people who went to Ellingham in the past.
As for the plothole I’d like to be answered....How did Stevie know about the trunk Alice was in when it was only Leonard Holmes and George Marsh who knew about it in the 1930s? George Marsh died without ever admitting anything to anyone except Leonard and no one could have seen it back then aside from those two. So for Stevie to know it was Charles based on the trunk was impossible.
Im serious, Maureen Johnson. let me be your editor going forward
P.S Does anyone here have Goodreads accounts? let me follow you there!
When I started reading this book, I had a low bar for it (as I usually did when reading YA novels). In the end, I was conflicted. It subverted my expectations and left me wanting more but at the same time, I couldn't ignore what I didn't like.
The book has two interwoven mysteries-- the past 1936 unsolved case and then the present one. That being said, both are amazing and left me wanting to so-desperately buy the second book despite having no money (haha.) The past mystery is a lot more compelling to read than the second one. What I didn't like about the second one was how it started halfway into the book...leaving just enough pages for the author to give it a half-baked conclusion.
Stevie Bell, the protagonist, didn't actually do much investigating as much as navigating the complicated waters of high school. Which left me wondering, is this a coming-of-age novel, or a mystery novel? Because in all honesty, it read more like a coming-of-age novel. The whole sideplot with David and Edward King was also weird and made the story disjointed.
-weird exposition typical of YA novels. straightforward prose, no emotions— MC just blandly narrating things.
-abrupt change in characters’ tempers. they either suddenly get pissed or sad on the verge of crying. amelia’s prone to quick spurts of anger even before the truth about what jules did was revealed.
-yeah I get it, amelia has blue and pink highlights and it’s cool. no need to emphasize it several times during the first few chapters. get over it, jules.
-this works better if the story is in a third person perspective. the first few chapters are filled with awkward expositions from both sides. either so many things are happening at once or some paragraphs are redundant because the other MC has already explained it. let’s not even talk about how the Centaurius, Explorer IV and the Undying are all just thrown in the book.
-spoiler. can’t remember if this has an explanation and I simply forgot it, but why in the world did Elliot Addison reveal all classified information on live TV if he wanted to keep everyone safe?
-amelia buying out her sister seemed so much like a truth bomb when it could’ve been revealed to Jules earlier.
-most YA novels depict adults as either 1D villains or 1D idiots. unearthed is no exception.
-jules keeps on telling how he’s a genius. if I met someone like him irl, idk if id be able to last the whole day alive.
-life or death situations are almost always punctured by teeny bopper scenes. case in point, chap 27. there’s no sense of urgency between amelia and jules. they stare at each other, make cute remarks like the earth isn’t in danger.
-why did the undying go through all the fuss of creating puzzles in the huge temples and spaceships when they can just invade earth straight-on??
The characters are lackluster and not well-rounded. Galen is nothing but smart and Orson nothing but evil. For a villain, he wears his heart on his sleeve which doesn’t make him any more convincing as an antagonist. Besides, he doesn’t have any other motivation for his actions aside from his ambition to be powerful. Can’t get any more one-dimensional than that.
As for the plot, nothing much is at stake because nothing literally happens, apart from a staccato of battles throughout the story. The story is meant to be about Krennic fooling Galen into enticing the power out of the kyber crystals which in turn, will power the Death Star. Otherwise, he can’t fool Galen into changing his Pacifist stand. But in the entire story, Krennic already knew about his principles. So the reader is instead served with other side plots like, Has Obitt, Tarkin, Poggle the Lesser and others. Those things only prolonged what should be a story less than two hundred pages. I know James Luceno should hit a word count before publishing this, but the story could’ve been a lot better if Krennic fooled Galen right from the start using any means necessary but he didn’t fool Galen into joining the research group until past the book’s first half.
One of the things that prolonged the progress of what should be the overarching narrative is the kidnapping on Vallt. You can cut that part out and it won’t affect the story at all. After getting kidnapped, the reader gets several butt-long pages of Galen sending what seems to be love letters to Lyra (which doesn’t contain much aside from overly vapid detailed descriptions of his prison cell and his assurances to his wife). It did nothing but consolidate the fact that Galen is a prison of his own genius, science-y mind. Luceno also dedicated more than what is required in explaining and describing the itty-bitty details of the Death Star’s schematics, logistics and weaponry. If you remove all the unnecessary things, that only leaves the reader a hundred pages, give or take.
Because there isn’t much in the way of the plot, Luceno seemed to overcompensate by using big and technical words—which can hinder your reading experience. I’m not looking for a straightforward prose like in YA novels, but I do prefer reading replied instead of vouchsafed. The overly-technical descriptions of the DS can alienate the reader because not everyone will appreciate the whatchamacallits of the battle station (unless of course you are a scientist or polymath like Galen.)
Aside from that, Galen’s line of thinking became confusing the moment the story got to Malpaz. You’d think he already realized the true nature of his research—hence the secrecy and ‘moral dilemma’ that what he was doing was for his family—but as the story progressed, he still thought he was working on a renewable energy for damaged worlds. Parts like that made me go back and forth and try to understand if there were revelations/realizations that were revealed in between the lines. It had happened several times while reading the novel but it turned out it was just Luceno’s way of transitioning from one phase of the story to the next.
Since I’m already spewing it all out, I might as well mention the minor things that irked me out, like Chieftain Gruppe and the Chagrian Vice-Chancellor. Gruppe almost sounds like she’s from a John Green novel while the Chagrian Vice-Chancellor seemed so easy to read as a politician.
There were moments that made me believe this could’ve been a great book. There were parts that made me see that Luceno was more equipped to write characters like Tarkin (the only character I genuinely liked) and Krennic. It was interesting to see their dynamic and how they tried to one-up each other slyly. I would’ve been more invested in the story if at least eighty percent of it was dedicated to them circling around each other menacingly. I also could definitely say I liked Krennic better when chapter 8 rolled by. I got to see him not only being calculating but scheming as well.
Overall, while some parts of the book were entertaining to read, it was mostly bland and uneventful. It did nothing but further expound the technicalities behind DS and events near the end of Clone Wars and Revenge of the Sith. Aside from that, Disney keeps on releasing SW novels yearly just for money-grabs while paying little to no attention to the quality of the book. This might be nitpicking, but Catalyst certainly isn’t the only SW book I’ve read that had a lot of typos that escaped the editor’s eyes. No one is really eager to read SW-related stories yearly so I hope this year, Disney and LucasFilms spend more time focusing on the story quality than merely releasing another novel.
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