Strange & Ever After

Reviewed by: Shannon Schinagl - Maine State Library, Portland, Southern Maine Library District

Review Date: October 31, 2014

Review

*Disclaimer: this was the third book in a trilogy. I did not read the first two books. Therefore, some of my comments are stated without the big picture, and may not be completely accurate because of that.

I enjoy teen steampunk fiction, but I did not enjoy this book very much. From the first, the author and editor did very poorly in taking the time to quickly set up what was happening and introducing the characters for a new reader. I know doing so is possible, even in a trilogy, because I have experienced second or third books that had me excited to read the earlier books. Even by the very end of this book, I was still partly lost.

The plot was nonstop and exciting, and if I had known what was happening, it might have been even more compelling.

The characters were diverse and fully-formed, but without the background of the first two books, I did not become very attached to them. In addition, one character named Daniel was supposed to be a boy from the streets. Unfortunately, part of the time his speech reflected this (with "ain't", etc.), but the rest of the time his speech was the same as the other characters. This was similar for another character, Joseph. Joseph is creole, but his speech only reflected this part of the time.

I did go on Amazon.com to read the customer reviews. While one can never be completely certain who is writing the reviews, many appeared to be written by teens, and they were overwhelmingly positive. So again, my dislike of this book may be due to reading the third book in isolation.

Overall Book Score: fair