I’m lucky because I read the book 1 just last year August, so I’m in a fresh post-read symptoms and memory (avoided a reread ha.) even they actually published with 9 years different, book #1 by 2014, and book #2 by 2023.
The book 1 is a 5 stars reading for me, I love the unlimited imagination within the sand world that built by Hugh Howey. But very unfortunately, for book #2, it end up with a 1 star for me.
What's wrong?
Across the Sand (The Sand Chronicles #2)
by Hugh Howey
1/5
1/5
The book 1 is a 5 stars reading for me, I love the unlimited imagination within the sand world that built by Hugh Howey. But very unfortunately, for book #2, it end up with a 1 star for me.
What's wrong?
The teenager style story
Book #2’s story line are so much focusing on the characters, and those main characters are mostly a bunch of kids that are below 18 years old… I’m sorry to say that but this made the whole story line a teenager adventure reading. Mmmm, I must clarify that I’m not here to say that teenager style is something lower grade, it’s just no longer what I’ve preferred. Damn. I’m a 30+ aunty, what do you expect? And I guess most Hugh Howey’s reader started with Wool series, ehem, Wool series is not really recommended for teenager. 😛 So.Confusing scene changing
The scene changes are so… weird. And there’s even a time travel? I’m not sure, I’ve read twice and my understanding that’s a time travel, which this element is so broken within this dystopian fiction book. Most of the time I’m seriously confuse with what are they actually trying to do and didn’t see how each scene change help in story progress.Low or zero mood swing
Best thing of reading this book is your mood is not swinging for the entire reading. LOL. There’s no mood trick in this book, usually in fiction reading we might have quite a significant mood changed eg can’t wait to see how the story progress, who is the real murderer etc. This reading basically telling you everything, line by line, sentence by sentence. It’s like reading a non-fiction self-help, that guiding you how to progress further.Reduced cliche
Ha! If you read Hugh Howey's book, you must have noticed the change in his writing for this book. The cliche is reduced like for 90%! Is this a good thing? I think so especially for Fiction, in my opinion, as a fiction reader, I'm looking for story progress rather than the author's vocabulary library.Conclusion
Maybe.. this story should beautifully stop after Vic destroyed the No-man land. Now I’m struggle if I should go for book #3 in the future if they got one. 😐Valuable quotes from the readings
- We move, not because we have to. But because we must.
- But we were happy not because this isn’t hell, but because we were too young to know any better.”
- Nobody ever values the thing they’re good at, just what they wish they could do better.
- I mean that nothing is permanent, and all things come to an end.
- life wasn’t meant to be easy, and there was no one right way. Whatever worked. Whatever worked.