Let the Sky Fall, 1 (Sky Fall, #1)

by Shannon Messenger

[ladygrey]

ETA REREAD: There was a lot of this story I didn’t remember. A lot more than I realized. Bits of it came back as I read but also I was expecting a few scenes I think actually happen in other YA books. 

The good part is it didn’t annoy me as much as the first time. 

* * *******

In some ways this is a pretty good book. For the most part the characters and the world building are decent enough. I think there was a lot of room for considerably more development in the world and with the characters but what we're given was enough to pull me into the story and it has to get a very solid three stars just for being a really fun, unique idea.

Oddly, my biggest criticism for this book is with the editor and not the author. I don't know why it feels like the editor dropped the ball more than the author wrote poorly but it just seems like Shannon Messenger had a really good, unique idea and was able to write it decently enough but that the editor didn't have a strong enough hand in helping her focus the story. 

I basically had three issues. 
One: it's really repetitive. Beyond sentences that repeated the same idea over and over, the characters often had an inner monologue reviewing what had just happened in the book. One chapter actually opens with a review, as if it's the opening to a sequel and apprising the reader to bring them up to speed. But the events covered in two pages weren't from a prior book, they were from two chapters ago.

Two: there were two key elements (Audra's special gift and her mother's) that were not distinguished at all.
"I can hear the even the softest whisper of change or dissent, translate any turbulence or unease, and adjust. It was my father's gift." pg 20

"The slightest ripple in the air speaks to her as clearly as the words of the wind's song. A secret language only she understands. A constant push and pull. An ebb and flow of power and drain, stillness and motion. A rare gift and burden none of us have ever understood." pg 71

The bland description and lack of really integrating them distinctly into the fabric of the story makes them essentially meaningless. We get little more of it than that one line of the mother's gift - there's not nearly enough substance to it to support the incredibly important role it plays in the story.

Three: there's this one thing in the story that's pretty obvious in less than 50 pages, as soon as the word "bond" is uttered in the narrative at all. It's not explained until page 139 and the characters don't even get it until 393 and even then it's something alluded to rather than any sort of full understanding. Characters should never be dumb about something so obvious to the audience.

Three is really just an annoying thing and fairly little in the grand scope. But fixing One and Two would have made a real difference. Especially the repetition thing - it's a 400 page book and instead of letting us get to know the characters by telling us everything we already knew about them and about the situation that space could have been filled with letting us get to know the characters by telling us new things about them and and new things about the world and that would have been a whole lot more interesting.

And even with all that you know I'm going to read the sequel.