Item: More Than This
Rating: 3.00
Author: pamela

by Patrick Ness

From two-time Carnegie Medal winner Patrick Ness comes an enthralling and provocative new novel
chronicling the life – or perhaps afterlife – of a teen trapped in a crumbling, abandoned world.

A boy called Seth drowns, desperate and alone in his final moments, losing his life as the pounding sea claims him. But then he wakes. He is naked, thirsty, starving. But alive. How is that possible? He remembers dying, his bones breaking, his skull dashed upon the rocks. So how is he is here? And where is this place? It looks like the suburban English town where he lived as a child, before an unthinkable tragedy happened and his family moved to America. But the neighbourhood around his old house is overgrown, covered in dust and completely abandoned. What's going on? And why is it that whenever he closes his eyes, he falls prey to vivid, agonizing memories that seem more real than the world around him? Seth begins a search for answers, hoping that he might not be alone, that this might not be the hell he fears it to be, that there might be more than just this...

First this book was 28 days
Then it became The Matrix
Then it became Total Recall
Then Great Expectations
Then Sophie's Choice

Finally it turned in to something original, but by that time I'd already gone through every sci-fi pop culture trope to date that I'd stopped caring or even noticing.

I've heard amazing things about Patrick Ness, so to say I was disappointed by this book is an understatement. I can clearly see what a talented writer he is so I couldn't mark it as a bad book, but I found it to be bland and unoriginal.

I have been assured that Patrick Ness' other works are excellent so I'm going to try not to be put off by this one.

More Than This

by Patrick Ness

Reviewed by pamela on Sep 9, 2014

Reading updates