The Diviners
The Diviners series, Book 1
Libba Bray
Little, Brown Books
Fiction, YA Fantasy/Historical Fiction/Mystery
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Evangeline "Evie" O'Neill never means to cause trouble... well, not bad trouble. But this time, she's gotten herself in a real pickle: not only did she get herself drunk (illegal, what with Prohibition on), but she let slip a shameful secret about a popular boy in town. She should've known better than to show off her little gift - her ability to glean secrets and memories from objects - but, well, it was a party, and there was alcohol, and it got her the attention she craved. In their small Ohio town, it's a scandal for the ages, and the only way her parents see out of the mess is to ship their wayward teenage daughter off to a bachelor uncle in New York City. This, for Evie, sounds like a dream come true. 1920's New York City is where it's all happening, a city of glitz and glamor, where anybody can become anything. Sure, Uncle Will's a stodgy old stick in the mud, running a dud of a museum dedicated to supernatural curiosities, but Evie's determined to make this city her own, joining in the flapper scene and sneaking out to speakeasies and living life to the fullest. If only she could shake the nightmares about her dead brother... Then the killings start, murders with occult overtones. When Uncle Will is called in as a professional consultant, Evie is plunged into the dark and dangerous side of the city, and a mad cult's prophecy about the end of the world that may be on the verge of coming true.
REVIEW: I had a very mixed reaction to this one. On the plus side, Bray establishes a strong sense of the times and the place, evoking the energy and the slang, as well as the dark undercurrents that resonate to this day (particularly the mutually incompatible ideas of what America is supposed to be, the irrationality of extremism, and the notion of eugenics and other means to "purify" the nation and eliminate "undesirable" or "weak" or "corrupting" elements of society). Evie's a girl of her time and in her moment, embracing the seemingly limitless possibilities of the city that never sleeps in the heyday of the 1920's. She's also rather selfish and somewhat dense and prone to simply not saying important things to draw out storylines, dancing around important revelations or plot points without daring to advance them. But, then, she's not the only one guilty of that charge. The book would've been about a third shorter if it hadn't spent so much time and energy setting up things that went nowhere (in this volume, at least), just being creepy and ominous for the sake of being creepy and ominous (to the point of tiresome repetition), or otherwise having people dither and waste page count by almost doing something but the deciding against it or putting it off or conveniently forgetting it. And even by the end, characters don't really learn to spit things out, and keep withholding vital information from those who most need to hear it. The plot itself, once it decides to get going (and when it decides to actually progress) is decently creepy and twisted, with ties to the occult craze and secret societies and doomsday cults built on warped belief systems, and comes to a satisfactory climax... after which the book lingers way too long on wrap-ups meant to hook me into the second volume. The titular "diviners", despite laborious introductions and dark portents of them being needed soon, don't even play into the story as much as one might expect. On the expectation that the second book, too, will burn a third or more of its page count simply setting up the volume after (or just letting plot points fizzle out), I don't expect I'll continue. Otherwise, it's not a bad story, with some interesting ideas; I just wish it had actually gone somewhere with more of them.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Ring Shout (P. Djeli Clark) - My Review
Heart-Shaped Box (Joe Hill) - My Review
Girl Waits With Gun (Amy Stewart) - My Review
No comments:
Post a Comment