2014-12-28

lightreads: a partial image of a etymology tree for the Indo-European word 'leuk done in white neon on black'; in the lower left is (Default)
2014-12-28 08:55 pm

More Than This by Patrick Ness

More Than ThisMore Than This by Patrick Ness

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


The book opens with our teenaged protagonist drowning. And then he wakes up a continent away, apparently alone in an abandoned British town.

Ugh, you guys, this book is so good -- Patrick Ness is such a crazy beautiful motherfucker – I can't cope. I also can't say much about this, because you've just got to go on the journey, but here are some things.

This is a young adult book about nihilism, and it is so smart; this book scared me so badly at one point that I actually eeped; this is a little bit slipstream and a little bit metafictional and a lot about that moment when you look up from the bottom of a very deep well of pain and you're, you know, still a baby yourself so you don't know how to survive; this book played with me and jerked me around and mindfucked me at least twice, and I said please and thank you.

Oof, so good. And frustrating. And inconclusive – but necessarily so. And just – some of my Goodreads friends are totally wright about young adult, it really is doing things that adult fiction just can't touch.




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