Wow, it's been a while since I've posted. I didn't realize. I have read books. I promise.
On with the show...
This book was quite an entertaining read. I read it in two days, which is not easy for me, and that tells me I enjoyed it. I like quirky characters. I like fantastic situations and supernatural phenomena. I like adolescent protagonists. I like book series...es. I just might read the sequel. I am giving this book a B-.
Why a B-? Didn't I just say it entertained me? Didn't it have a mixture of many things I love? Yep. But...adulthood and literary criticism have set in. I have (shudder) expectations now. Imperfections bother me unless the rest of the story is so strong it carries me beyond these cracks in the foundation and I don't feel I have to hurdle over them myself. A few of my quibbles with the book are minor yet troubling. One is purely based on what I've come to desire when I read fantasy or magic or what have you. Actually, I could probably blame Harry Potter. Anyway, here are the major pros and cons of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children:
Pro #1: A fleshed out protagonist. I like him. He's normal yet not, logical yet not, young yet intelligent.
Pro #2: A great setting. I love WWII stories. I love European stories. Though the book begins in Florida, the series is clearly going to be set in mostly Europe.
Pro #3: I felt satisfied by the easy but still clever puzzles, such as what one of the "peculiars" draws and where it clearly is, even though the heroes don't know where it is yet.
Con #1: Continuity! The main character would do something, a day would pass, and he would say, "The man I met this morning..." No! You met him yesterday! Or how incongruent (that is so a word, why is it underlined by my Spellcheck?) the whole timeline is, period. Or when the main character has his hands tied behind his back, but then he rolls up his pants (without being untied!) and then he's being led by a rope which would indicate his hands are in front of him, so how did all this happen? Am I supposed to infer they untied him so he could remove his shoes, then they decided to tie his hands in front? These are just a few examples of the continuity issues.
Con #2: Caricature. Some characters are just extremely stereotyped. That's not always a bad thing, but here it almost made me put down the book at one point. That point came when the wise old Miss Peregrine herself rips our protagonist a new asshole because of something she should know he wouldn't know not to do. And then we find out later she does the same thing he did! And it isn't ironic. I also found the unemotional relationship between the protagonist and his parents disappointing. And convenient. And I don't like anything in literature done for convenience.
Con #3: The big one. My own problem, really, and I know this and I'm fine with that. I...don't like it anymore when I feel like fantastic things are random for the coolz. Why did the monsters look the way they did? I understand the event that turned them into monsters, but why those particular shapes, sizes, tentacles, teeth, etc.? I know why the author chose the "superpowers" of each of the kids (based on real photographs he has come across). But somehow even then their powers seem...random. The author says in an interview included in my edition that sometimes he forced photographs into the novel because they were just too cool. That made some characters feel...forced. I know it's nitpicky. I know I've crossed over to some dark side that can't just shut up and go with it. But it is what it is.
My friend and I were talking about Haruki Murakami's 1Q84 one day and she asked me to explain the point of the father's side story and the "town of cats." I can't explain it. But something in my gut tells me Murakami did not just include that part for the coolz. I can feel it's meaning. Even if I can't explain it. I want things to have meaning even if I don't know the meaning myself. I feel like a lot of Miss Peregrine's is just randomness with no metaphor. Ugh, I'm beginning to need metaphor. What's wrong with me?
Anyway, it took me way longer than necessary to write this. Hopefully soon I will read a book that completely blows me away.
