Kudos to my friend for gifting me a Gothic YA trilogy. When I first saw it, my initial reaction was, What made you choose this? But my friend had faith in me and my reading prowess amidst the sceptic looks I gave her. This said, she made a brilliant choice. I loved the trilogy. I have only managed to read the first two books and I am in love with Sarah Rees Brennan’s imagination. I couldn’t resist writing the reviews here, sooner than even my friend perhaps ever expected me to. I am not a fiction fan girl but I do approve Young Adult fiction, of which I missed reading a substantial chunk while growing up. Here come my reviews for the first two books in the series, Unspoken and Untold. Ooh! I love how spooky the titles sound. Did I mention my friend gifted me hard cover copies? How I love her!
Book One- Unspoken
Perhaps no other author has captivated Gothic fiction in such a mysterious and vivid narration. This brilliantly written first book of a trilogy gave me absolute chills as I read, transfixed by the story of Sorry-in-a-Vale and its residents. I started reading after dinner, when there was absolute quiet and silence, coming from the streets. The book started with a chirpy school going editor of a school paper and her life in the town. Then, come the Lynburns. A mysterious old family returning to their home town after 17 years. This girl, our protagonist is Kami, a Japanese-Brit living with her family on the edge of the woods, close to the Aurimere, the Lynburns’ family manor. I love the exotic names that Brennan has come up for her characters. We get introduced to the voice in Kami’s head, a boy with whom she shares a mind connection since childhood. He is everything we imagine him to be. And I am going to use ‘mysterious’ a couple of hundred times throughout this review for lack of a better adjective right now. I like it how Brennan creates a very visual narrative through her writing. The last time I imagined on such a racy scale was perhaps after reading Enid Blyton’s The Famous Five. Yes, I reread children’s literature from childhood quite often.
So, Kami is setting up her newspaper headquarters in a room off one of the school buildings and gets greeted by Ash Lynburn, who makes an entry with a camera dangling from his neck and with a magnetic aura that left me quite speechless. Believe me as I write here, that I fell irrevocably in love with this introduction of a character and is absolutely now one of my all-time favourites. They meet a couple of times later, once when Kami fixes his car engine, (Yes! Another one of my favourite characterisations for a girl and guy in YA fiction.) and charms Ash Lynburn off his socks. He is certainly intrigued by her, I could tell that as I smiled to myself. I feel like I will probably write spoilers here, so, let me just cut short my depiction of the entire story and write that Kami comes across The Lynburns’ family history and pieces together other happenings in her quaint little town. She also comes face-to-face with the voice in her head which she thought was imaginery. And be still, my beating heart- we meet Jared Lynburn. WOW! I said aloud with an imaginary cupid dancing around my head. This was utterly unexpected. If this review doesn’t tempt you to read the book, well, I don’t know what else will.
The book ends on a cliffhanger but of course, I have the second book. I stayed past 5.30 in the morning when the alarm went off loudly in my parents’ bedroom and I jumped in my seat. I went to sleep thinking I will dream of the Lynburns and Sorry-in-the-vale, but nothing of that sort happened. Perhaps, I will, in a couple of days after my obsession to dream about them dies down. 😀
Book two- Untold
So, in my very excited state of wanting to know more about the Gothic adventure of a little British town, I started reading the second book of The Lynburn Legacy immediately after breakfast at ten. I have to be honest here. The pace with which the second book started got on my nerves. It was slow and with a lot of disappointing narratives which I thought were quite unnecessary because clearly the reader wants to know more about the Ash-Kami-Jared triangle that has formed in the first book and carried over to this. But it seems very confused. And by the time it was lunchtime, I was losing interest and kept skipping paragraphs. But like a sensible and patient reader, I held on to Brennan’s conviction about the other characters’ back story. Kami’s friends- Angela, her brother Rusty, Holly- and more delving into the Lynburn sisters.
I would have loved to read some Japanese history of Kami’s grandmother and more cultural references, but this book concentrates on a fast paced marathon of the dark magic events after about 100 pages or so. Hope my not giving out key words from the book will interest the reader to pick up this book. I have to say that even though I was excited to know more about the unwrapping of the vivid layers of characters, it also slowed down sometimes when they mouthed ridiculous jokes. I did not expect them to do it, because I had personified them in a strong mental skeleton of serious people. The thing that I most loved in Untold were the poetry verses at the beginning of some chapters by Christina Rossetti (She is fast becoming one of my favourite Victorian ‘spooky’ poets), Robert Burns, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Longfellow. I really love Brennan for infusing these verses. They made me stay and kept my reading interest alive.
I am not particularly very happy with how Ash is portrayed in this book. He suddenly becomes this scared rabbit who doesn’t seem to exercise his charm or take control of events happening around him. Given that the entire nature of this Gothic novel is slightly frightening, he came across as a poorly developed character because the focus was so much on building up the brooding Jared and the confused(?) Kami. She switched between the brothers and at times it made me sick. It’s another thing to be friends with two brothers but to also respond to each of their love calling. I know it’s only a novel, but hey, young adults and children are affected quite seriously with this stuff. I finished the book at tea-time and honestly, was glad to have done with it since it made no sense in a lot of chapters. Maybe I expected too much. It’s been a very long time that I have read a series, a trilogy, for that matter and I was hoping it would turn out to be something I will re-read after every couple of years. Let’s see what the last book, Unmade has in tow to offer.
P.S. I am wearied after reading two dark books in less than 24 hours and will take a day or two to cool off. Expect the third review soon. 🙂
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