The Inspection by Josh Malerman
I was so excited to jump into this book because it was by Josh Malerman (author of Bird Box!)
J is a student at a school deep in a forest far away from the rest of the world.
J is one of only twenty-six students, all of whom think of the school’s enigmatic founder as their father. J’s peers are the only family he has ever had. The students are being trained to be prodigies of art, science, and athletics, and their life at the school is all they know—and all they are allowed to know.
But J suspects that there is something out there, beyond the pines, that the founder does not want him to see, and he’s beginning to ask questions. What is the real purpose of this place? Why can the students never leave? And what secrets is their father hiding from them?
Meanwhile, on the other side of the forest, in a school very much like J’s, a girl named K is asking the same questions. J has never seen a girl, and K has never seen a boy. As K and J work to investigate the secrets of their two strange schools, they come to discover something even more mysterious: each other.
I found the first half of this to be very gripping. It was extremely suspenseful and thrilling. Layer after layer of the conspiracy is slowly revealed, and it grows more and more twisted as you progress. However, once the two sides find out about each other, the book devolves into a slight mess. Here, the book starts to drag on and on, and things stop progressing logically. The way the children behave is completely unbelievable, and it detracts from the story. They’re twelve years old!
Also, the book does not end cleanly. The mystery is closed, the evil is defeated, and the book just .. keeps going. The book goes from clean and efficient to just confusing and uninspired.
The premise of the book is very interesting and thought-provoking, but the execution could use some work. Especially because the reader already knows about a lot of things that are hidden from the children, the book feels boring when the children spend so long figuring these things out. This book would have been much better if it was much shorter. Many parts of this book could have been left to the imagination; not all of it had to be spelled out for the reader. Rather, leaving it open to interpretation might have increased its value.
The Inspection has its moments, but they are distressingly few of them.
J is a student at a school deep in a forest far away from the rest of the world.
J is one of only twenty-six students, all of whom think of the school’s enigmatic founder as their father. J’s peers are the only family he has ever had. The students are being trained to be prodigies of art, science, and athletics, and their life at the school is all they know—and all they are allowed to know.
But J suspects that there is something out there, beyond the pines, that the founder does not want him to see, and he’s beginning to ask questions. What is the real purpose of this place? Why can the students never leave? And what secrets is their father hiding from them?
Meanwhile, on the other side of the forest, in a school very much like J’s, a girl named K is asking the same questions. J has never seen a girl, and K has never seen a boy. As K and J work to investigate the secrets of their two strange schools, they come to discover something even more mysterious: each other.
I found the first half of this to be very gripping. It was extremely suspenseful and thrilling. Layer after layer of the conspiracy is slowly revealed, and it grows more and more twisted as you progress. However, once the two sides find out about each other, the book devolves into a slight mess. Here, the book starts to drag on and on, and things stop progressing logically. The way the children behave is completely unbelievable, and it detracts from the story. They’re twelve years old!
Also, the book does not end cleanly. The mystery is closed, the evil is defeated, and the book just .. keeps going. The book goes from clean and efficient to just confusing and uninspired.
The premise of the book is very interesting and thought-provoking, but the execution could use some work. Especially because the reader already knows about a lot of things that are hidden from the children, the book feels boring when the children spend so long figuring these things out. This book would have been much better if it was much shorter. Many parts of this book could have been left to the imagination; not all of it had to be spelled out for the reader. Rather, leaving it open to interpretation might have increased its value.
The Inspection has its moments, but they are distressingly few of them.
Comments
Post a Comment