Blamblog - Brett Lamb's Blog

Monday, September 25, 2006

The Unwritten Book

REVIEW by Sharky

Do you like books? Sure ya do! I like 'em, too. Especially the books that ya' read! The Unwritten Girl is the first novel by blogger and transit fetishist, James Bow. I just read it and here's my two cents:

I liked the book because it's a lot like TRON. Regular people -- just like you and me -- descend into an irregular world of awe and wonder. The story follows Rosemary and Pete as they travel through 'The Land of Fiction' to rescue her brother, Theo, just as Jeff Bridges travelled through 'The Land of Computers' to rescue his gaming code and save Bruce Boxleitner. Except that Unwritten Girl is aimed at a young adult audience and TRON is for mature audiences only.

But I digress.

Bow succeeds as a first-time author by spinning a light, lean tale (although, at the end you learn that the title of the book doesn't make any sense ... unlike the title of this review). The target demographic is "young adult" and I'm told that's kids 10-12 ... which is funny, 'cause that's the same term used by thirty-year-olds to describe their age group. Of course, the 'teen porn model' age group is 26-42, so I guess it all makes sense.

The novel starts strong but after entering 'The Land of Fiction' I was left wondering what could have been: the unwritten book. Rosemary's brother's mental illness haunts the opening chapters and seems like it's going to be a key ingredient of the story. But after the characters enter 'The Land of Fiction', the mental illness bit is pretty much dropped.

I was expecting his mental ilness to be one of the reasons (or THE reason) for the journey. It's a rule of drama: if you show a mental illness in the first act, you'd better have pulled the trigger by the end. Instead, we're treated to a string of somewhat amusing characters who appear without consequence. In the end, the most promising part of the early chapters remains unexplored ... much like the deep-rooted, unresolved emotional problems of Jeff Bridges' character at the end of TRON.

You want to know my advice for Bow? Ditch the fantasy and take the real-world story from the first chapters and explore that. That's where the meat is; the proof is in the pudding!

Xmas is coming and you can buy the book online at Amazon. A good gift for brats 10-12 who have an insatiable appetite for fantasy fiction wrapped in a thick, juicy slab of precious Victorian-styled sentimentality. Stick it in their stockings and get them to shut up for a few hours.

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