Anachronist: Book Review
I started reading the book with no expectation, other than the numerous high rating and a blurb saying the book is a mix of Dr Who and something else. I am not a fan of doctor Who, and have not seen a complete episode, but have a general idea what the show is about. So I can’t completely say whether the comparison does it justice, but I think the blurb says so in the first place is because the book is set in London, and is sci-fi book.
The book has the background of secret society, latent power and reluctant/anti-hero. Sounds a bit cliche, right? What I like about the book though is the main character has quite an arc in the story and there is development to his character. What’s more, the story started with him being in the gutter, figuratively and he is relatable as a person, in a way that he makes mistakes and just some kid growing in the not-so-rosy side of London. He struggles with caring after her mum, living in a council house and affording to top up the electricity meter. All these things adds realism to the story. I expected the story to continue like that so I was (pleasantly) surprised that then changes began to happen, sci-fi stuffs, but in a very plausible way (if you can suspend your physics understanding for a few hours).
What I don’t quite like is these changes seem to be rushed, compared to the realistic story before that, and characters suddenly began to develop bonds a bit too quickly. What I also didn’t like was the story changes views a few times, even within the same chapter, mainly I believe in order to move the story and to create exposition.
There were also quite a number of typos and missing punctuation marks that really, really makes the book seem unfinished. For the record, I was reading this on Kindle.
The book manages to sum up quite nice in the end, with quite a number of loose ends. I thought some of them could have been dropped or tied up but I assumed the writer left some of it to create sequels. I was even more surprised when I searched online that the book has 5 more sequels! There is another series previously, the Island of Fog, that I thought was a good read and enjoyed reading very much. However it got too long and the story became too ‘weak’, which something I am afraid will happen to these series too.
Overall it was a very interesting read but given the high number of book in the series combined with the sloppy editing in this book, I am a bit reluctant to continue reading further.
