Review: Creative concept but lacking in execution
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 08 12, 2012
BRUNSWICK was an interesting read. I enjoyed the whole idea of a world created through the power of one boy's imagination, and particularly liked how well-developed and thought out the world was. The entire book focuses on the power of imagination, good triumphing over evil, and doing what you know is right, even when you don't want to, which are all themes that were dealt with very well. And I especially loved the creatures that populate this world; Ann Haines did a first-rate job when choosing who would live in this world, and the special abilities they all had to make them unique. I really liked the character of Gideon, and his magical abilities. I would have loved to see more from him, to know exactly what the limits to his abilities were, but obviously, this is Jonathan's story and not Gideon's, so I completely understand why it wasn't something that was really discussed.I also found myself really interested in Dashana. To me, she was the most interesting character of the book. She is forced to do the Destroyer (or It)'s bidding, but knows there's something going on that she's unclear about. She is trying to sort out what to do, while fully knowing that going against him could lead to her death. Her chapters were some of my favorites in the book, because I really liked watching her conflicting emotions and feelings, particularly when she wasn't even sure why she was feeling uncertain.My one complaint is that there were a lot of errors in the book, not only with punctuation (particularly in the dialogue), but also in terms of the way the book is written. There are a lot of run-on sentences, and I found it really distracting in the beginning. The story itself was interesting enough to keep me reading, and by the middle of the book I was more easily overlooking the fact that there weren't proper sentence breaks. But it's definitely something that affected my reading experience, and accounts for some of my rating. I also felt like Jonathan was much younger than his supposed age (15), and I had a hard time believing that everyone in Brunswick (aside from It) was really so perfect and nice; that seemed a bit far-fetched to me, even in a fantasy world.However, I did like to see that Jonathan was a boy comfortable with physical displays of affection with his family (and that his family is entirely intact). It's not something we normally see in YA, so that was rather refreshing. (His conversation at the end of the book with his teacher made me raise an eyebrow, however, because as someone who works in the education field, it just seemed entirely too unrealistic -- not the conversation itself, but her coming to his home, and the kiss she bestows on his forehead. Trust me, NO teacher is actually going to do this, small town or no!) I also liked his display of anger over being brought to Brunswick in the first place, as I felt it was spot-on for a boy of his age.All in all, BRUNSWICK is a tale of adventure, doing the right thing, and trying to save the world. The world itself is richly imaginative with fantastical creatures and wonderful details. I definitely enjoyed it.A copy of this book was provided to me through the YANR Blog Tours.