Publication date: January 11 2012
Published by: Little, Brown
Genre: Adult, Dystopian, Mystery, Suspense, Horror, Sci Fi, Paranormal
Rating:
She soon learns that she is a Rook, a high-ranking member of a secret organization called the Chequy that battles the many supernatural forces at work in Britain. She also discovers that she possesses a rare, potentially deadly supernatural ability of her own.
In her quest to uncover which member of the Chequy betrayed her and why, Myfanwy encounters a person with four bodies, an aristocratic woman who can enter her dreams, a secret training facility where children are transformed into deadly fighters, and a conspiracy more vast than she ever could have imagined.
I haven't given birth, but I'm sure it can't be more agonizing than reading this book 😫
Don't get me wrong-this book was not all bad. Overrated maybe? Sure, but not bad.
First of all, I guarantee it is unlike anything you've read before, especially if you're a noob in sci fi like myself. The story in the Rook is very intricate, definitely not a breezy beach read, and I truly appreciate the amount of thought and detail that went into it.
So much detail.
Oh my God, so much detail.
I don't think I've ever complained about a book having too much plot, usually it's the other way around. I'm all for making interesting and unique stories, but this one went overboard. Like, it's surpassed the "over the top" limit by a lot. It is so densely written that its 496 pages felt like 1,000 to me. I kept reading and reading and I was not even half way through! Every sentence is packed with so much information, 90% of which was not even necessary for the progression of the story, I forgot it 10 minutes later and it didn't make any difference.
O'Malley's writing was very clever and sarcastic yes, but it also felt arrogant to me, like he wanted to prove how smart he was and how well he has planned this whole thing out, when we was mostly spewing unnecessary, boring prose.
Also, I hate to say it, but there was a lot of body shaming in this book. Didn't really see that coming, right? Body shaming in a sci fi mystery, what? I know! It's true though:
[this is just a sample, there was actually way more in the book]
"massively fat"
"The fattest man she’d ever seen"
"an extremely fat woman"
"His kilt could have been used as a tartan slipcover for a settee" wtf?
Myfanwe was a pretty bland heroine; not bad, but not necessarily great either. It was a bit strange to me how a person with no memories whatsoever suddenly finds herself in a weird, secret paranormal world and she just slides right into it like no one's business. I mean, couldn't you have spent a bigger part of the book explaining that, and cut from literally anywhere else?
By the time of the final reveal, I was so exhausted and so ready for it to be over that I just didn't care anymore. There is not a huge list of characters anyway, so I pretty much suspected everyone.
Also, it turned out that it didn't really much mattered in the end because the whole situation was wrapped up in a pretty little bow in the last 15 pages or so...
I know! So frustrating. After 10 days of weaving though massive amounts of information thinking that it is all going to come together in the end and I will be rewarded for my patience, the ending was not at all satisfying. It was so rushed and it totally negated the importance of what happened before it, leaving me feeling like: "All that ⬅️ for this ➡️ ??"
For all the brave souls out there that want to spend an insane amount of time on a book which is only half good, I applaud you and respect you.
The rest of you, just watch the TV show. Way easier.
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