Summary:
Seth drowns, but wakes up in his neighborhood. He could have sworn that he died, but everything looks the same. The only thing is, there are no people. Seth has to figure out how to survive, if this is some hell that was made especially for him, and what he is going to do with his afterlife. He just expected "More than This".
My thoughts:
This is very slow and repetitive but an interesting concept and a very good author. It makes the book difficult for me to review because I'm so torn about it. On one hand, I liked the philosophical musings and attempting to seek out what the afterlife is. On the other hand, a lot of the book is Seth, alone, doing nothing. While Seth is not necessarily a bad character and he does pull you in rather quickly, no one is interesting enough to hold my attention for well over a hundred pages and do nothing but figure out what he is thinking. It is extremely easy to put the book down. I have nearly forty books waiting for me to read them. I don't need one that is easy to put down. Once Seth meets other people, the book does pick up a bit. The only problem then is it becomes repetitive. It's almost as if Ness is attempting to explain things in multiple different ways. As a teacher, I do this. It angers most of the people around me that understand the concept. Thank you Ness for showing me how annoying I am. I got it. I don't want it explained to me in another way....again.
Other than that, I liked the overall plot of the book. I was often wrong in my predictions, which led me to read more. After about halfway through the book, it did get more difficult to put down, but there were still breaking points where the pace slowed again. I think the flashbacks were the most interesting parts of the story. They allowed me to understand more about Seth and gave me a good reason to question his current situation. While they are not in any particular order, I do think they added a lot to the overall story.
Seth drowns, but wakes up in his neighborhood. He could have sworn that he died, but everything looks the same. The only thing is, there are no people. Seth has to figure out how to survive, if this is some hell that was made especially for him, and what he is going to do with his afterlife. He just expected "More than This".
My thoughts:
This is very slow and repetitive but an interesting concept and a very good author. It makes the book difficult for me to review because I'm so torn about it. On one hand, I liked the philosophical musings and attempting to seek out what the afterlife is. On the other hand, a lot of the book is Seth, alone, doing nothing. While Seth is not necessarily a bad character and he does pull you in rather quickly, no one is interesting enough to hold my attention for well over a hundred pages and do nothing but figure out what he is thinking. It is extremely easy to put the book down. I have nearly forty books waiting for me to read them. I don't need one that is easy to put down. Once Seth meets other people, the book does pick up a bit. The only problem then is it becomes repetitive. It's almost as if Ness is attempting to explain things in multiple different ways. As a teacher, I do this. It angers most of the people around me that understand the concept. Thank you Ness for showing me how annoying I am. I got it. I don't want it explained to me in another way....again.
Other than that, I liked the overall plot of the book. I was often wrong in my predictions, which led me to read more. After about halfway through the book, it did get more difficult to put down, but there were still breaking points where the pace slowed again. I think the flashbacks were the most interesting parts of the story. They allowed me to understand more about Seth and gave me a good reason to question his current situation. While they are not in any particular order, I do think they added a lot to the overall story.
