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I read the book when I saw the comparison to Pullman and Tolkien, excited to read a great young adult novel. I was very underwhelmed from the first few pages.

I found the prose clumsy, with an overuse of dashes (which are odd to find in fiction prose at all), colons and semicolons.

The story was full of shortcuts to avoid explaining the intricacies of the story. I realise it's a children's book and I'm an adult, but I'm certain my younger self would also have felt patronised by "so this happened, and then that happened", with no explanation.

The adventures felt like a series of random tasks to fulfil (first find the sphinx, then find this gold from this tree, then find the dryads...). The man spending years (?) becoming a tree just felt silly.

For what it's worth, it was certainly good enough that I finished it. But the comparison to Rowling, Pullman, Tolkien... the story and the respect to the young reader's critical thinking are so far off for that.