Book in Review: Down the Wormhole by Ana Franco
10:06 PM
Title: Down the Wormhole
Author: Ana Franco
Publisher: French Press Bookworks
Publication Date: March 17, 2015
Format: ARC
Summary (via Goodreads)
In a city there is a tiny lane that seperates two orphanages - one for boys and one for girls. Inside live two very special groups of teenagers. These teenagers carry a secret and leave it tucked safely away in their mysterious lives.
Then one day, a girl named Kitty arrives. No last name, just Kitty.
Before Kitty has time to be astonished by the teenagers' real identitites, she is whisked into a magical realm that slowly unfolds her own. She must come to terms with her true place in the world while she can, because time is ticking and there are secrets in the wormhole.
Travel with Kitty and her new friends Down The Wormhole into a mysterious world of magic, mythology, and mayhem.
I am so disappointed. I have so many things to say about this book, but I don't know exactly how to explain them. I felt like this book could have done really, really well if the writing was different.
When I started reading this book, I thought that I would love it since the characters seemed promising and the plot was unique. The length worried me, though. The story is one that you have to draw out and explain, for not everyone knows about the mythology behind these things, especially since it is a fusion of multiple mythologies. I don't think it's sufficient to introduce a god simply by telling us that they are the goddess of chaos or the god of mischief. If you're gonna talk about this, you have to describe, you have to give us more background. For a story that requires details, explanations, background, this book seemed too short. Even so, I thought to myself that length doesn't matter if the plot was laid out well. Unfortunately, the more I read, the more I realized that the length was going to become an issue.
At the start of this book, Sif and Eris were battling. The scene was written well and made me excited to read the rest of the book. Unfortunately, when Kitty and the other gods were introduced, the book seemed to lose that quality. If the author was consistent in the way that she wrote the scenes, this book would have turned out great.
I'm gonna state the problems one by one as I think that that would be the best way to talk about this.
1. The Writing
Franco wrote this book like she had so many ideas that she wanted to pack into a few pages. The writing was rushed, there weren't much descriptions, I couldn't connect with any of the characters. For me, the most important part of a story is the writing. You can write a cliche and it wouldn't matter to me if you could write it in a way that would interest me, make me connect with the characters. You could write an essay on pencils, and I would read it if you gave me something that interested me. Down the Wormhole's plot interested me, but the writing was a letdown. I wouldn't mind if you made this book 500 pages long as long as you wrote everything you needed to write, and honestly, with the plot given, you could do exactly that. I also felt like the author changed her mind quite a few times on whether or not she wanted to make the book humorous or serious or deep or light. Sometimes, the writing did not match with what the scene is supposed to be, funny when the severity of the situation required serious handling. I also believe that she wanted to put so much into her work, and she wasn't willing to sacrifice some of it, so the entire thing became a big mess. There were also a lot of typos, grammatical errors, misspelled words, and jumbled sentences. I know that it's just an ARC, but the amount really distracted me from the story itself, and sometimes even caused me to become confused.
2. The Characters
So, nearly all of the characters are actually gods here, but aside from their godly names, they have normal names and normal personalities too. The problem with this is that the fact that they're gods don't really seem to have much importance. I mean, yes, I understand why they had to be that particular god, but on a much deeper level, it doesn't really serve any purpose. As stated above, I can't really relate to the characters. Kitty overreacts all the time, picks fights for no reason, and is, all around, a horrible person. Thomas... I don't really know. I don't like him, I don't hate him, and I don't really care about him. Some of the important characters seemed to be tossed aside at the end, and some of the characters brought back and suddenly important even though they served no purpose for more than half of the book. The romance happened quickly, and the book kinda focused on that more than the plot itself. I just think they could have focused on a lot of other relationships that would have made the story really great. The relationships were unnecessary, and there wasn't much character development.
Down the Wormhole holds potential that, unfortunately, wasn't carried out well. I think that this book could probably be really good if it was revised and edited. The writing was not great, and that ruined the book for me, the story becoming uninteresting and not relatable. I'd love to read the book in its final form just to see if the book is better after its final edits and revisions. I look forward to reading Franco's next works, and I believe that she does have great potential to become a very good author.
Author: Ana Franco
Publisher: French Press Bookworks
Publication Date: March 17, 2015
Format: ARC
Summary (via Goodreads)
In a city there is a tiny lane that seperates two orphanages - one for boys and one for girls. Inside live two very special groups of teenagers. These teenagers carry a secret and leave it tucked safely away in their mysterious lives.
Then one day, a girl named Kitty arrives. No last name, just Kitty.
Before Kitty has time to be astonished by the teenagers' real identitites, she is whisked into a magical realm that slowly unfolds her own. She must come to terms with her true place in the world while she can, because time is ticking and there are secrets in the wormhole.
Travel with Kitty and her new friends Down The Wormhole into a mysterious world of magic, mythology, and mayhem.
I am so disappointed. I have so many things to say about this book, but I don't know exactly how to explain them. I felt like this book could have done really, really well if the writing was different.
When I started reading this book, I thought that I would love it since the characters seemed promising and the plot was unique. The length worried me, though. The story is one that you have to draw out and explain, for not everyone knows about the mythology behind these things, especially since it is a fusion of multiple mythologies. I don't think it's sufficient to introduce a god simply by telling us that they are the goddess of chaos or the god of mischief. If you're gonna talk about this, you have to describe, you have to give us more background. For a story that requires details, explanations, background, this book seemed too short. Even so, I thought to myself that length doesn't matter if the plot was laid out well. Unfortunately, the more I read, the more I realized that the length was going to become an issue.
At the start of this book, Sif and Eris were battling. The scene was written well and made me excited to read the rest of the book. Unfortunately, when Kitty and the other gods were introduced, the book seemed to lose that quality. If the author was consistent in the way that she wrote the scenes, this book would have turned out great.
I'm gonna state the problems one by one as I think that that would be the best way to talk about this.
1. The Writing
Franco wrote this book like she had so many ideas that she wanted to pack into a few pages. The writing was rushed, there weren't much descriptions, I couldn't connect with any of the characters. For me, the most important part of a story is the writing. You can write a cliche and it wouldn't matter to me if you could write it in a way that would interest me, make me connect with the characters. You could write an essay on pencils, and I would read it if you gave me something that interested me. Down the Wormhole's plot interested me, but the writing was a letdown. I wouldn't mind if you made this book 500 pages long as long as you wrote everything you needed to write, and honestly, with the plot given, you could do exactly that. I also felt like the author changed her mind quite a few times on whether or not she wanted to make the book humorous or serious or deep or light. Sometimes, the writing did not match with what the scene is supposed to be, funny when the severity of the situation required serious handling. I also believe that she wanted to put so much into her work, and she wasn't willing to sacrifice some of it, so the entire thing became a big mess. There were also a lot of typos, grammatical errors, misspelled words, and jumbled sentences. I know that it's just an ARC, but the amount really distracted me from the story itself, and sometimes even caused me to become confused.
2. The Characters
So, nearly all of the characters are actually gods here, but aside from their godly names, they have normal names and normal personalities too. The problem with this is that the fact that they're gods don't really seem to have much importance. I mean, yes, I understand why they had to be that particular god, but on a much deeper level, it doesn't really serve any purpose. As stated above, I can't really relate to the characters. Kitty overreacts all the time, picks fights for no reason, and is, all around, a horrible person. Thomas... I don't really know. I don't like him, I don't hate him, and I don't really care about him. Some of the important characters seemed to be tossed aside at the end, and some of the characters brought back and suddenly important even though they served no purpose for more than half of the book. The romance happened quickly, and the book kinda focused on that more than the plot itself. I just think they could have focused on a lot of other relationships that would have made the story really great. The relationships were unnecessary, and there wasn't much character development.
Down the Wormhole holds potential that, unfortunately, wasn't carried out well. I think that this book could probably be really good if it was revised and edited. The writing was not great, and that ruined the book for me, the story becoming uninteresting and not relatable. I'd love to read the book in its final form just to see if the book is better after its final edits and revisions. I look forward to reading Franco's next works, and I believe that she does have great potential to become a very good author.
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