More Than This by Patrick Ness ★★☆☆☆
A boy named Seth drowns, desperate and alone in his final moments, losing his life as the pounding sea claims him. But then he wakes. He is naked, thirsty, starving. But alive. How is that possible? He remembers dying, his bones breaking, his skull dashed upon the rocks. So how is he here? And where is this place? The street seems familiar, but everything is abandoned, overgrown, covered in dust.
What's going on? Is it real? Or has he woken up in his own personal hell? Seth begins to search for answers, hoping desperately that there must be more to this life, or perhaps this afterlife...
What's going on? Is it real? Or has he woken up in his own personal hell? Seth begins to search for answers, hoping desperately that there must be more to this life, or perhaps this afterlife...
I am so torn. I really have no idea how to rate this book.
This entire review contains spoilers for this book.
Turn back now if you haven't read it!
Turn back now if you haven't read it!
And then the story twists. And at first, I was willing to play along. Because the first part had been so good.
But in the end, I mostly just feel betrayed.
I've seen people complain about the open-ended-ness of the conclusion. Which, I understand, but honestly, if you didn't see that coming from fifty pages away, I don't really know what to tell you.
Ness plays this game with you in the narrative. Is it real? Not real? Does it matter? (I want to make a Peeta Mellark joke here, I am restraining myself.) And while I can understand what he was going for, it's not a choice I respected. It started to feel like we were trying just a bit too hard.
Which is a real shame. Because there are moments of sheer brilliance hidden away in here. The first 160 pages, as I mentioned, but also the slow unraveling of what had happened. The dynamics and interplay between characters was so strong, so real. I would literally read an entire book about Tomasz.
And that's part of why I think I'm so torn. Because I am so disappointed. Even as we hit the weird Twilight Zone-esque happenings, I was still prepared to go along for the ride. But it just continued to devolve.
I was genuinely frustrated by this book as I finished it. Unsatisfied, not because of the open ending, but because of the wasted potential. This was not a book with answers. Which I get. But instead of being a poignant tale about a young boy coming to terms with his life and death, it ended up as a overwrought cliched mess.
Logging you in...
astistenning 49p · 547 weeks ago
What was my theory? Well, I had thought that maybe the MC was in a coma that whole time. It kept talking about how everyone there had been bumped in this certain spot in their head, so I just assumed it put them in a coma and that their bodies were stuck in the hospital while their spirit were stuck in this middle world. If they were captured by the death guy, they would die, but if they could just hold out they would eventually wake up and reenter the real world. That's what I wanted the twist to be. I felt like with that outcome it would have been more of a story about a young boy coming to terms with his life and death and have more power, instead of being this weird thing about technology and whatever.
But yeah. I absolutely love Patrick Ness, he's my favorite author, but I have always said this would not be the first book I'd recommend to anyone who is thinking about trying his work out.