"Blackbrooke"-An honest review from a fangirl's perspective
*WARNING!* Contains spoilers. Only read if you've read the book...
Thank you, Ms Silver, for providing me with a copy in exchange of a review
As soon as I finished the book I realised my feelings were neither in one end or another. They were mixed. After reading several reviews on goodreads, they still are, if not more.
In terms of writing, the book was definitely better than some of the other YA books I’ve read out there. However, it still wasn’t good enough for me.
I’m a YA, but about to leave this bracket in a few months as I turn 19. Perhaps is the fact that I am very ahead of my years, but the writing style of this book left me wanting more.
When I was reading the book, the writing style was screaming “BEGGINER” to me. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was reading a first-time novel by a first-time author. And I was right.
In many senses, it was like reading fanfiction. Original, yes, but the sort of writing that one would encounter on fanfiction nonetheless. There was so much dialogue, sometimes I couldn’t cope and I had to resort to skim-reading in order to get to the point. I am aware that dialogue is an important part of a YA’s novel (specially YA) but there were times where I thought Silver was overusing it, like when the main characters have a goodbye-life party towards the end. And that of course creates problems, because the bigger picture is lost in the dialogues. Sometimes, as a reader who questions everything and anything, I would ask myself “Okay, I know what this lot are doing, but what about the rest of the town? What’s going on elsewhere? Does nothing else affect these characters’ lives? Are they so completely independent that nothing else comes in their way?” Because of this I felt like, at some points, the story wasn’t believable at all, and that of course made me like the book a bit less.
Moreover, the main way in which we are introduced to the character’s different back stories, and even to some little events, is through flashbacks. I remember using flashbacks in my own writing a few years ago, back when I was still grasping the edges of The Art Of Writing. As my writing matured, I realised there were other ways around it, and I stopped using them. Of course, it isn’t fair for me to make this comparison since I haven’t written a book yet, (and my hat goes off to Silver for managing what I yet haven’t been able to), but I guess all I’m trying to express here is that I was a bit disappointed at the writing techniques that were used. Whenever Liberty had to justify something, she resorted to narrating a flashback. In many ways I felt like the only reason Silver used the flashbacks was to justify events, like when Noah goes missing and Liberty suddenly has a flashback about a tree, which prompts her to go to that tree and look for Noah. It was like the only reason the past happened was so that Liberty could use it for the present. If Noah had never gone missing, we wouldn’t have gotten the flashback about the tree, and we would have never known it existed. There was no guessing. There was no surprise. There was no clever element. The only one privy to this information was Liberty, and the readers were completely excluded from the equation. It would have been so much nicer if Gemma and Noah had mentioned the tree WAY before anything happened, so that then we, the readers, could have been in the same thinking tracks as Liberty and have guessed where Noah was as well. Does this make sense? It does to me. But there you go, that’s why the continuous flashbacks annoyed me so much. Because the suspense was lost in them, and there was no “oh, that’s why the tree was mentioned about 30 pages earlier, how clever!” surprise.
For the rest of the part, in terms of writing there isn’t any more negative points I have to voice out. Being quite honest, I was glad that at least Silver managed to create believable characters with her writing. What I mean is that, a 17 year old girl was rightfully acting like a 17 year old girl, and the thing about misplacing the category didn’t happen here. In a previous review of The Maze Runner I mentioned that as I was reading it, all I could think about was that it was like reading Harry Potter book 1 all over again. That’s because Thomas , despite being 16, was acting like 12, and I thought the book should have been categorised under the “children’s section”, not “YA”. Thankfully though, Silver hasn’t done that here, and this book DOES deserve to be in the YA category. However, there are some things I’d like to point out first, which all bring me into my next point: the characters.
In terms of the characters, I have to say I was both pleased and displeased. I was pleased because as I have just mentioned, they all appeared to be their age. I was displeased because in some cases it was just too TYPICAL. Liberty is your stereotypical teenage girl who has a stereotypical boyfriend and a stereotypical best friend with yet another stereotypical boyfriend. It seems that nowadays what is preferred is a quiet, shy, intelligent, rule-abiding girl whose best friend, in this case Gemma, is her own alter-ego: loud, law-breaker, sexy, daring, and not so smart. In order words, the opposite to her. I can’t really say I blame Silver though. A character like Gemma is very fun to write, and (in most occasions) enables writers to explore a side of themselves that they wish were more in contact with. However, me being me, I have to say I am tired of stereotypes. I want something different, and this book did not give me it.
As for the boyfriends and other characters, well, I wasn’t very pleased either. I was very happy with Gabriel, because the kid seemed really smart for his age, but I can’t really say much about him because he disappeared so suddenly. With Noah though, I was very displeased. Aside from being your typical heart-breaker (just that in this case it’s his heart which gets broken), I was a bit thrown off to find that he was such an emotional wreck as well. Hell, most characters were, which is another thing that annoyed me. I thought Noah was a strong, independent, brave trouble-maker, much so that when he comes into the church bearing Gemma in his arms, I was blown away. I thought: wow. He must be really brave. But then, as the story progressed, all I could get out of him were tears. He cried so much, that I’m not sure how I felt about this. I understand in a way he was breaking the male stereotype of “boys don’t cry” (so kudos to Silver here...) however it is not something I am comfortable with. If he had been depicted as an emotional wreck since day 1, I would have been happier. But I just felt like his characterisation wasn’t steady. It wasn’t solid. I felt Silver had changed his whole personality by the end of the book, and I didn’t like it. And about the crying, well, there was so much crying throughout that I started to feel exasperated. I understand it is a natural emotion, but it was just too much. I would have liked to see some other reaction, like anger, self-pity, numbness or downright shock. Cassius on the other hand, was alright. He was still stereotypical, but in a different way, as he was portrayed to be the “voice of reason” in a way. Like, a similar version of a mature Edward Cullen, but without being too extreme and more believable, which was nice. One character that I had a bit of problems with, was Denzil. I mean, he was definitely the funniest, and I am forever grateful to Silver for writing him into the book, but there were a few moments when he wasn’t constant at all, and as a reader I was confused on his characterisation. Was he a child-adult, full child or a full adult? The answer, I know, is half-child half-adult, but he was indeed nearly 40 and there was something that threw me off when he said he had found friends in a bunch of 17 and 18 year old kids. That’s all I have to say though, as I totally liked him and he was the one to make me laugh out loud.
The last thing I want to discuss is the plot. Well, if you’re reading this is because you’ve already read the book, and therefore don’t need a summary of events, so I won’t give you one. But there are a few things that I have to say about the plot in general, since this book was classed as “horror” yet I was never, not once, scared or gripped to the core.
The first page of the book has the Blackbrooke Rules, and I must say they were interesting enough for me not to be put off by the book (which has happened a few times). They created an element of mystery and suspense which immediately made me want to read more. As I turned the pages though, I couldn’t figure out for the life of me why this book had been placed in “horror”. For the majority of the book it seemed more like the real story here was a love triangle, or a love square, or a pentagon between all of the main characters. Sometimes the Crits, or the real horror came second, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. Overall, the book wasn’t as gripping as I had expected it to be. There are some books which you pick up and cannot put down. This book just wasn’t it for me. It has 230 pages or so and I should have been able to read it within a day, but because I wasn’t gripped enough, it took me a week. However, it’s not fair to say it isn’t gripping at all. It’s one of these books that hooks you and you don’t even realise it, so then when you’re playing piano blissfully ignoring the rest of the world, the storyline of this book comes back to haunt you, and you feel the need to read. Honestly, I can vouch for the truth in this.
Also, the plot twist about the walk outs was very good. When everyone starts to “walk out” I thought of a hundred explanations, but I never would have guessed what the real explanation for walking out was. So when Liberty figures it all out, I was horrified. Giving up their first-borns to the Queens? No. Freaking. Way. That’s just sick and twisted. Kudos to Silver, for making it so.
However, the Cassius “solution” came as no shock, and I can’t understand why Mr Forest had never opened up about what really happened that night to anyone else. And worst still, I can’t understand why he opened up so easily. It’s like, I was expecting him to be a big suspense character that would have me guessing and infuriated about his odd-behaviour throughout the book, but instead all it takes is a gun pointed to his head for him to talk. Hmmm. Had no-one else tried that? And also, if the town was already aware that special people (like albinos, twins, dwarfs) were preferred by the Crits (specially the Quees) why had no one else tried to exchange one of these for so many years of freedom? They have a freaking intelligent system organisation outside of Blackbrooke which supposedly has studied Crits forever, and yet not one of them has ever figured out that the Queens would be open to negotiation? Was it really just Mr Forest the only one to figure it out, at the tender age of 17? I’m sorry, but I just don’t buy it.
And the last thing that annoyed the most was the ending. Yes, you know it was a cliffhanger, and I certainly wasn’t expecting Cassius to still be alive, but what the hell?? There’s a whole building or whatever dedicated to studying Blackbrooke and (apart from Mr Jones and people really high up jobs) no one knows about it? And top of that, they SPY on Blackbrooke through CCTV cameras, and no one knows about it? This is where I have to say I was very disappointed with the book. Why? Because all I kept thinking was: ALLEGIANT! THE MAZE RUNNER! NOT ORIGINAL AT ALL! It’s like the town was an experiment, and of course the two most renowned books which have already used this plot twist are the two that I mentioned above. So I was disappointed, because the idea had already been used. And on top of that, although I didn’t expect Cassius to still live, I just think Silver did it in order to create an unnecessary love-triangle between Liberty, Gabriel, and him. All I could think about was how much this reminded me of the second book of the Delirium Trilogy (Pandemonium), where the first boyfriend of the main female character, who was supposedly dead, suddenly shows up in the “free world”, thus creating a love-triangle. Oh, I forgot to mention this was also how the book ended.
So, in overall, what are my feelings on this book? Well. I liked it. I really did. Like I mentioned before, I had to read till the end because the story, although not immediately gripping, did keep me hooked until the end. And the story was really interesting too, I liked the whole idea about Blackbrooke being closed off from the rest of the world, and the fact that there were no man-crimes here because of the Crits. My favourite scene from the book was when Liberty and her friends were watching a “horror” movie, and Liberty mentions how it all seemed really surreal to her because the true horrors were the Crits, and not some made-up vampires. That was really insightful, and believable, too. I’m not really keen on the ending, and on the writing style, but I am glad I read it. Perhaps the only reason this book didn’t touch my fangirl feelings is because of my own maturity, where I mostly enjoy adult books, and this book (as I mentioned before) isn’t adult, it’s YA.
I don’t know how the series goes on, or how it ends as I haven’t read the following books, but I can say that with all honesty I just expect them to get better, as Miss Silver can only go up from here. She’s a very promising writer, with interesting ideas, and I can only predict a successful future for her, in the same way that I am sure as she grows older her writing style will mature as well and her books will reach their full potential, thus becoming great.
-A
