Usually when I really hate a book, I can’t quite put my finger on what it is that I hated, or else there’s just a whole list of little things that irked me until I ended up having bad feelings toward the book.
However, in this case, I know exactly what it was that turned me off The House of Mountfathom. It was the writing style. Its choppy and truncated sentences never gave me a chance to get into the flow of the story, as I was always wondering what word was missing from the sentence to give it that incredibly staccato feel.
For some, it might have added to the looming sense of tension and doom in the book, but for me it really was just a constant frustration as I ground my teeth at every sentence. McDowell misses out non-crucial words in almost every sentence, both descriptive and dialogue, meaning that the book is still perfectly understandable, but really intensely frustrating.
This meant that essentially from the first page I was predisposed towards disliking the book, and any weaknesses in it I picked up on and resented even more. So when the main character, Luke, was paper-thin and showed no personality other than an aptitude for magic, that was frustrating. When Killian, presented in the blurb as his best friend, doesn’t so much as make an appearance until the second half of the book, I was frustrated again. When huge aspects of the book were left unexplained and impenetrable, I was actually quite upset.
There was so much potential in this book – a pair of young boys, saving a country gripped not only in the midst of political upheaval (the book covers the period of the Rising, the Free State, etc) but also in magical upheaval, as old races are dying out and new types of magic are being brought to the fore, and trying to forge a new way between the ancient order of the driochta and the necessity of adapting to their modern world. Plus faeries! Ash-dragons! Gyants! Boreen men!
Only… what is an ashdragon? Why are they so bad? It’s never explained in the book, and google says that an ashdragon is a scoop for clearing out fireplaces.
What’s a boreen man? I know what a boreen is. And what a man is. But together, they definitely don’t seem to describe the almost… naiad/dryad-like characters in the book.
Basically, this book left me with a whole lot of feelings of WTF and irritation, rather than the dark and entrancing fantasy I was expecting.
However, in this case, I know exactly what it was that turned me off The House of Mountfathom. It was the writing style. Its choppy and truncated sentences never gave me a chance to get into the flow of the story, as I was always wondering what word was missing from the sentence to give it that incredibly staccato feel.
For some, it might have added to the looming sense of tension and doom in the book, but for me it really was just a constant frustration as I ground my teeth at every sentence. McDowell misses out non-crucial words in almost every sentence, both descriptive and dialogue, meaning that the book is still perfectly understandable, but really intensely frustrating.
This meant that essentially from the first page I was predisposed towards disliking the book, and any weaknesses in it I picked up on and resented even more. So when the main character, Luke, was paper-thin and showed no personality other than an aptitude for magic, that was frustrating. When Killian, presented in the blurb as his best friend, doesn’t so much as make an appearance until the second half of the book, I was frustrated again. When huge aspects of the book were left unexplained and impenetrable, I was actually quite upset.
There was so much potential in this book – a pair of young boys, saving a country gripped not only in the midst of political upheaval (the book covers the period of the Rising, the Free State, etc) but also in magical upheaval, as old races are dying out and new types of magic are being brought to the fore, and trying to forge a new way between the ancient order of the driochta and the necessity of adapting to their modern world. Plus faeries! Ash-dragons! Gyants! Boreen men!
Only… what is an ashdragon? Why are they so bad? It’s never explained in the book, and google says that an ashdragon is a scoop for clearing out fireplaces.
What’s a boreen man? I know what a boreen is. And what a man is. But together, they definitely don’t seem to describe the almost… naiad/dryad-like characters in the book.
Basically, this book left me with a whole lot of feelings of WTF and irritation, rather than the dark and entrancing fantasy I was expecting.