by Philip C. Stead
2 stars
Full disclosure, I listened to the audiobook of this and think that may have hindered my enjoyment of the book.
I fully expected to enjoy this one. It had a Terry Pratchett feel to it so I really thought I’d love it, but the whole book just fell through for me.
Follow Bernadette, an orphaned goat keeper, as she attempts to save her tortoise friend, Perseverance, from becoming dinner for the king by seeking out the Tree Who Grants Wishes, recovering the missing goat, Lancelot, along the way.
The story is told out of order, starting in the “middle”. I liked the concept of this and really thought I would enjoy it but it just didn’t work for me. Being thrown into the “middle” of the story meant I didn’t really have time to get to know and connect with the characters before the action started. Because of that, I wasn’t very invested in what happened to them. Bernadette could have been a really cool character but she is quite underdeveloped, which was disappointing.
The book really dragged for me. I almost DNF’ed because I just could not get into it. Honestly, the most interesting part for me was Chapter 1 so it’s a shame it came at the end.
The jokes get quite repetitive and quickly stopped being entertaining and just became annoying. There are a lot of inclusions that just comes off as filler, like the Latin phrases. They didn’t really add much to the story, made the book more repetitive, and slowed down the whole pace.
I may reread this in physical form. I listened to the audiobook so missed out on the illustrations and creative text formatting. It seems like some of the formatting was worked into the audio narration which added to the repetitiveness of the book. The audiobook really did not work for me.
Okay read overall. Maybe my expectations were too high for this one, but I did not enjoy listening to this book. May try again with the physical book at some point.