Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

I’ve thought long and hard to deter­mine if there was a sin­gle aspect of this book that I even liked.

The char­ac­ters, the story-telling, the writ­ing, the themes� was there anything?

Ìý

No.Ìý I tried but this book was painfully bad.Ìý I am not at all exag­ger­at­ing when I report that I fell asleep twice within the first twenty pages.Ìý This book was highly rem­i­nis­cent of both Buffy and Bleach.Ìý So what?Ìý Pretty much half the things pub­lished in YA these days are rem­i­nis­cent of Buffy.Ìý Unfor­tu­nately, you want to at least stand up a lit­tle in the com­par­i­son.Ìý This is not com­pa­ra­ble to Buffy. This is Buffy if Buffy weren’t Buffy but Dawn was Buffy.

Would you really want to watch Buffy if Dawnnwere Buffy?

I would like to take this oppor­tu­nity to remind peo­ple that there is noth­ing wrong with writ­ing a real­is­tic teenager.Ìý Ellie was cer­tainly real­is­tic â€� for a cer­tain type of teenager.Ìý She was vapid, shal­low, thought­less, com­pletely stuck in her own world and hope­lessly self-centered.Ìý This is a prob­lem for two reasons.

Ìý

1. Nobody takes issue with this.Ìý Will men­tions twice that she doesn’t take her duties seri­ously enough but this is laughed off and treated by the text as if he takes them way too seriously.

2. The fuck­ing world relies on her and her alone.


Look, I don’t want to be nit­picky, but this girl has our lives in her hands.Ìý What I want to know is, is there a way that can…not be the case?

Ìý

She’s so bor­ing, and the novel becomes bor­ing because of how bor­ing she is. This is sup­posed to be a book about an immor­tal war­rior girl who fights Reapers to save human­ity.Ìý It ends up being Gos­sip Girl with the occa­sional mon­ster.Ìý What con­tin­u­ally amazes me is that Ellie even has friends â€� because she has all of the wit and charm of a mouldy mop.Ìý Yet Req­ui­site Best­friend and Req­ui­site Friend­zone Fred­die just hang off every word she says.

Ìý

Ìý

We have Will who is one of those annoy­ing, brood­ing male roman­tic inter­ests.Ìý There’s not much to say about him because he’s like ALL brood­ing male roman­tic interests.


They could have over­come the insur­mount­able obsta­cles to their love and found a way to be together but he was too busy brood­ing and she was too busy shop­ping.Ìý Also the world ended along the way.

Ìý

The writ­ing is bor­ing and the plot is painfully slow.Ìý The plot is barely there and Moul­ton com­pletely fails to marry the overtly long and com­pli­cated world build­ing with any kind of rea­son­able story arc.Ìý The only method she knows of con­vey­ing infor­ma­tion is in mas­sive info dump con­ver­sa­tions.Ìý After you fin­ish wad­ing through mean­ing­less, vapid social inter­ac­tion after mean­ing­less, vapid social inter­ac­tion you dis­cover that the few fight scenes there are in this book are painfully short and bor­ing.Ìý How am I sup­posed to care about the end of the world and the pos­si­bil­ity of a Reaper con­sum­ing my soul and con­demn­ing me to an eter­nity in hell when all Ellie fuck­ing cares about is her par­ties and social stand­ing?Ìý Oh, I’m sorry.Ìý She also cares about Mr Tall, dark, mys­te­ri­ous and broody.Ìý They spend a lot of time talk­ing.Ìý A. Lot. of. time.

It’s not like I expected her to go from 0-kickass in five sec­onds.Ìý But Ellie never at any point in this novel has a real rev­e­la­tion about the fact that she’s got a divine fuck­ing mis­sion here.Ìý And it’s not to attend par­ties.Ìý Think about it.Ìý Every time she’s going to the movies with friends or cof­fee, or a party, some­one is out there dying.Ìý And not just dying. Their soul is going to burn in hell and suf­fer eter­nal tor­ment and be used in Lucifer’s fight to con­demn ALL the souls.Ìý Every time Ellie decides to take a break and not be so seri­ous about her duties, which she does with alarm­ing fre­quency â€� a child, a woman, a man, SOMEONE will suf­fer for­ever for it.Ìý Every time she needs to inves­ti­gate some­thing or train and she says, “Oh, I’m busy at the movies tonight, can we do that in two days time?â€� she’s per­son­ally let­ting peo­ple down.

The hor­ror she expe­ri­ences every time she faces off against one of the Reapers (the hor­ror for which we are meant to sym­pa­thize as one of her strug­gles) yeahâ€� well, she has both Will and a cou­ple of kick arse swords when she faces off against them.Ìý Think of the chil­dren who have had to face that hor­ror on their own and have not survived.

I have no sym­pa­thy or emo­tional invest­ment in her at all.Ìý Sure, she doesn’t have her mem­o­ries, but even in flash­backs she is com­pletely disin­gen­u­ous as an immor­tal war­rior fight­ing for human­ity.Ìý When Buffy got her mis­sion, she woke up fairly quickly and real­ized that her hopes and dreams and free time were all com­pletely incon­se­quen­tial com­pared to her mis­sion.Ìý Ellie did not have that real­iza­tion in this entire novel.Ìý Every­thing took a back­seat to her social life and school cal­en­dar.Ìý Every­thing.Ìý And this was not per­ceived to be a prob­lem.Ìý Not even by the nar­ra­tion which gives far more time and invests far more heav­ily in Ellie’s star-crossed lovelife than it does in the fact that there is an apoc­a­lypse coming.

There is some­thing supremely wrong about that.