Books for Lolitas: Worldshaker

I had a hard time deciding if I would write about this book. I really don't like to review books I haven't finished, but as Matt pointed out, if I can't be honest and write about my experiences then I'm not doing a good job reviewing things. Still, I hate to be negative about books that are honestly trying. Especially when they come so close to being good.

Worldshaker by Richard Harland

The book has a rather interesting concept. A society that exists inside an enormous machine. The ones literally on the top and the ones literally on the bottom, which never mix. Indeed those that live on the bottom aren't spoken of in polite society. Eventually those being mistreated rebel with the help of the heir to the most powerful position within the machine. It's a rather cool concept in theory. It would have been a great concept in practice, too, I think, if there had been even just one hook within the first fifty pages. Anything. It didn't even need to be a major plot event. Just a phrase. Heck, I consider 'the sky was the color of cat vomit' to be the hook in Uglies.

Don't get me wrong. After I reached page fifty something it started to pick up and I began to get more interested. Unfortunately, by that point I was so frustrated with trying to see if it would ever pick up that I peeked ahead so as to not be clueless in conversations regarding the book, thus killing any desire to read the rest of it. This isn't to say it's a bad book to read, exactly. In fact I had saved the book for this month because I had so many people tell me how great it was. So perhaps I'm just too harsh. Or perhaps my writing teachers drilled the need for a hook at the very beginning into me until I can't like any book without one. Or maybe it was my desire to shake sense into the main character, who at least seemed to be improving when I put it down but was somehow uninteresting and asking for a blunt object to the head at the same time. Not to do damage, mind you, but to rid him of the desire to question things right in front of him twenty times. 'Can these people talk?' You just had multiple conversations with one! Aaaah!

I will give the book points for world building, which is rather well done and creative. And to be fair I may have loved the book told by another character. I can't say I recommend this book, however, there were so many people that recommended it to me that there must be something to it.

Edit: I realized when putting up today's post that I had mistyped the scheduled date for this post. I'm really sorry, dear readers. I hope you can forgive me that it was late.