Review: Just not for me
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 08 27, 2012
Brant's Tales Volume 1: Karme by Richard Mitchell is quite frankly one of the strangest books I have read in a long while. Also, having just finished this book, I find myself almost at a loss to describe it. Basically this book is about a girl named Karme, who was raised in the wild by her mother and isolated from the rest of the world because she is a "non-human". The book revolves around the people she comes into contact with and the ways that she impacts their lives. Effected the most is a young man who is new to town named Brant. They seem to have a connection right from the start and his influence on her is what sets the rest of the plot in motion. It has elements of fantasy in it, or at least it seems to have these elements, but nothing is explained. No real good explanations for what Karme thought she was or if she really had any powers at all. Although, after that ending I guess she would have had to have some power but I'm still not very clear on what exactly happened at the end. I had a hard time following the plot of this book mostly because of the way it jumped around so much. I did not like the notes from an older Brant looking back on the past. It was such a distraction and only seemed to confuse me more. I liked the setting but not the fact that it takes place in the 1950s. The characters felt well developed but the relationships between some of them just seemed so unrealistic and odd. Karme as a character was interesting but I honestly just thought for most of book that she was crazy as a loon because of the isolation she endured. My favorite character, John Waterbear, happened to be one that didn't show up until close to the end. His interaction with Karme did seem to breathe some life into this book and peak my interest again but it just wasn't enough to save it in my opinion. There were many social and racial issues throughout the book that did feel true to the time period and the characters themselves were from all walks of life but at times it felt like too many to keep up with. Overall, I just found this book to be really odd and hard to get invested in entirely.