Review: Great potential wasted.
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 04 16, 2012
This is a story of a girl with a difficult family history-to put it mildly-who enters the underworld alive through the gateway of the White Oak. As you can imagine, a living person in the world of the dead can cause quite a stir.I haven't read Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, but I imagine that's the sort of effect Kim White was aiming for. Cora's journey to and through the underworld is imaginative warping of old legends but the method of storytelling leaves something to be desired.The text's magic begins with a clear first person present voice that instantly bewitched me. As Cora stood by her father's grave, I stood there with her. As she fell and struggled in the sinkhole, I struggled with her. As she immersed in the cold underground river, I nearly drowned with her.This spell, however, was broken in the second chapter with the first point of view switch. White not only gives voice to Cora, but also to her twin brother Lucas, and the deceptive Minotaur guiding her through the underworld. I'm not a fan of multiple point of view narratives on best days, but two first person and one third limited voices is simply too much. It's enough to distance the most ardent reader.What's worse, I can't see what Lucas' and Minotaur's voices add to the story. I guess they were the author's attempt to add tension, but I felt they were draining what little excitement Cora's chapters managed to create.Then there's the series issue. This is the first book of four and it ends with a cliffhanger. To be completely honest, I felt a bit cheated by the ending, because nothing was resolved despite a chapter called The Verdict. What exactly was the point of Cora's adventure and what did she accomplish? I admit my ignorance could be due to lack of attention from my part, but I simply wasn't interested enough.**I received an Advanced Readers Copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley.**