The Serpent King

by Jeff Zentner

[Amber (The Literary Phoenix)]

The Serpent King is a story about young love, about loss, and about growing up and finding your path in the world. It's a novel that has received a lot of love and a lot of hype. I can see why people love it so much - it has that same tragic feel that John Green excels at. I can definitely see where this book would have a place in peoples' hearts, even if it was just a so/so read for me.

One of my biggest issues with this one is the plot - or, rather, the scattered around lack of one. I never quite knew where we were going as I listened, and I felt like I was always waiting for the next turn to see if that pointed me in the right direction. There were a lot of little subplots - two romances, a death, emotional and physical abuse in families. Zentner took on a lot all at once with The Serpent King, and as a result, we are all over the place. It feels like a year in the life of these characters, where we start on the first day of school, finish on summer vacation, and only one of them has grown a little.

The characters are well enough written. I liked Travis a lot - he reminded me of an ex I'm still fond of - and I think that the variety in personalities was well-done. Outside of the POV characters, subcharacters started to blend together. Lydia's New York friends jus felt like annoying interruptions, and the miscellany of mothers blurred.

The writing style itself was slow and steady, and there's nothing wrong with that. I think that Zentner did a good job capturing his voices and offered the right amount of suspense, detail, and surprise. I have no complaints about his delivery, per se, just about the lack of clear direction and that unsatisfied feeling at the end.

I would continue to recommend The Serpent King to people - in fact, I think my brother would like it - but it's not the sort of novel I am going to personally add to myself. I think it's worth a read, though, and it's a short enough book to be an easy weekend read from the library.