The Search for Wondla (Search for Wondla, #1)

by Tony Diterlizzi

[nannah]

First off, I just want to say that Tony DiTerlizzi is a fantastic illustrator with a wonderful imagination. His pictures are absolutely fantastic and beautiful. The creatures he's created are so creative, it's a shame that the story doesn't match.



I feel the actual plot (and the ending) is a little bit contrived. It's also pretty predictable as well as very, VERY cliched in some parts. The character arc of Rovee was like any other grumpy character who is "forced" to help the heroine and ends up buddy-buddy at the end. The dialogue also came off as being very awkward, especially with Eva's thoughts. They didn't sound like they could be spoken out loud at all. I understand DiTerlizzi wanted his story to have a more "faerie tale" kind of feeling, but it's all a little too formal to me.



More than that, many of the events in the novel just seemed to 'happen' without any real purpose. The characters just went from being in one scenario to the next, one problem to another. It became a little bit redundant after a while.



However, the book did have its good points, and during the middle, when Eva Nine was on Solas, the world-building drew me into the story.



Overall, this was an okay book, not bad but not particularly engrossing either.