In labored efforts to create a sense of otherness, the author trots in a host of invented animals ( garms, adars, jabbits and so on) and uses British cant (“The niff that bloke sent off…”). Before she finally follows him, hundreds of pages later, she is forced to compete in the town’s Duelum, which is a regular round of previously males-only bare-knuckle fights for which there is no clear rationale. She gets inklings both that Wormwood has a hidden past and isn’t the world’s only settlement after the town’s other Finisher flees into the deadly Quag, leaving behind a map and a bestiary that catalogs its creatures. Vega Jane gets by putting the finishing touches on high-quality manufactured goods (which, she later discovers, are thrown into a pit). Baldacci takes a late and none-too-nimble leap aboard the children’s-fantasy bandwagon with this tale of a rebellious teenager in a town surrounded by a monster-ridden forest.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |