WardenRed reviewed Wayward Son by Rainbow Rowell (Simon Snow, #2)
None
3 stars
That’s why people get in a convertible and hit the road without a map. That’s the promise. That you’ll finally see yourself when you don’t recognize the scenery.
First of all, I really appreciate all the nods at the first book’s events. It’s been ages and ages since I read Carry On, so I worried it wouldn’t be easy to get reacquainted with the characters and the story. However every time I started getting a bit lost at the beginning, the book gave me a handy reminder, to the point where I could easily recall entire scenes from the first novel.
As for this book itself… to be honest, it was chaos. Fun, entertaining chaos touching on interesting themes, but chaos nonetheless. It felt more like a collection of scenes slapped together in mostly chronological order, with new intriguing information sometimes getting injected too close to the end where …
That’s why people get in a convertible and hit the road without a map. That’s the promise. That you’ll finally see yourself when you don’t recognize the scenery.
First of all, I really appreciate all the nods at the first book’s events. It’s been ages and ages since I read Carry On, so I worried it wouldn’t be easy to get reacquainted with the characters and the story. However every time I started getting a bit lost at the beginning, the book gave me a handy reminder, to the point where I could easily recall entire scenes from the first novel.
As for this book itself… to be honest, it was chaos. Fun, entertaining chaos touching on interesting themes, but chaos nonetheless. It felt more like a collection of scenes slapped together in mostly chronological order, with new intriguing information sometimes getting injected too close to the end where there was no hope for a resolution, and then it just… ended, with a prolonged confusing climax and a lot of loose ends hanging in place of a resolution. Also, most of the character voices felt weirdly same-ish—even late in the novel, I mostly recognized them by the events they were going through and occasionally even had to glance at the chapter heading to see who was telling the current part of the story.
I did like a lot about the setting—the magic system here is simple yet weirdly engaging, and I adored the whole cauldron of weird and wild magical things America here is. I just wish the author dug deeper into most of these cool details. It’s the same with the characters and the themes: on one hand, there were a lot of scenes that focused on Simon’s mental state and the aftermath of being a magical child soldier and then losing his magic. On the other hand, for each such scene, there were five more where these things seemed to matter very little because the focus was on something very different. Or: Penelope had this entire thing where she had her whole future planned out and it included her boyfriend. Who broke things off with her very early in the book. And then, for the most part, that kind of stopped mattering, either.
Also, I have minimal idea what’s going on in Simon’s and Baz’s relationship by the end of the story. But I guess neither do they, so maybe that’s the point.
All in all… this is, as I expected, very clearly a “Harry, Draco, and Hermione go on a road trip through America after defeating the Dark Lord” fanfic with serial numbers filed off. And I’ve read actual HP fanfic that dealt with the same themes way more thoughtfully and presented better, more consistent narratives.
