Musings:

So I didn’t like this book. I tried to enjoy it, but it isn’t the story that it says it is. It’s weird, but not the weird I fall in love with. It took a lot of old tropes and meshed it together to try and come up with a real story that seemed more of a ghost of something that many have written so much better before.

I’m not writing this in my usual format because I literally didn’t like anything about this book. Some of it was ok. Vaguely. But, even then I don’t remember a single name but Tom, and he was the only character I only vaguely liked, but even him I had problems with.

This apparently was supposed to be set in a video game world, but none of it felt like an actual video game. It felt like it was written by someone who knows nothing about them and didn’t even pick one up to get a feel for what it’s like. Even narrative driven video games aren’t like this.

I felt like she should’ve written a western themed novel and just left it at that, but she decided to bring it into another “game” completely negating pretty much everything about The Glass town narrative and to throw in some zombies? It felt sloppy. It was confusing and honestly I don’t even know what kind of story this even was?

It certainly wasn’t a love story despite Tom getting with another girl character. There was no real connection there. Literally the only thing was that Tom is from modern times and understands modern ideas and believes in the girls right to chose her partner instead of being arranged to marry. Other then that I did not see any other connection. It came off as very flatly written.

The only reason I didn’t give this book a one star is that I didn’t hate it and it’s bad but I’m mostly just indifferent about it. Anyway, I read it cause I’d heard nothing about it and now that my curiosity has been curbed I am happy to move on from it.

I received this book from NetGalley in exchange of an honest review.

Tom is in a coma, when his friend Milo decided to use him as a guinea pig for a gaming device, able to transport his mind into a world where he will meet and fight with Augusta, to save her kingdom. And while Tom finds himself involved into this adventure and new world, in his real life, in London, his family and friends are not ready to let him go. They are trying to bring him back, talking to him, reading to him, like a girl from school, who is reading from Wuthering Heights.

I absolutely love meta-fictional world and this one is full of awesome and strong characters, so inventive and full of plot twists, action, romance, I couldn't stop reading it. It's the first book I've ever read by Celia Rees, but I love her writing style and her characters, because the first is captivating and well done, the story skillfully written and the characters are alive, brimming with passion and intensity. Amazing

Thank you so much to net galley for sending me a copy of this book. I was so excited to read it but I ended up being a little disappointed.

Glass Town Wars is a puzzling read. I didn’t dislike this, but I was left frustrated by so many elements.
Fascinated by the Bronte link, but this was not really explored until the latter stages so I never felt we fully got the picture I expected.
We begin with a young man, Tom, who’s in a coma. We don’t know what’s happened to him, but for some reason a friend of his decides to use Tom as a guinea pig in a bizarre gaming experiment. He travels back in time and finds himself caught up in someone’s attempt to overthrow those in power.
Alongside the story of Tom in his travelling guise and Augusta (the woman he ends up fighting for), we find out a little of what’s happening to Tom while in hospital.
While there were a range of aspects to this, they really didn’t combine that clearly. We never got details about what had put Tom in this precarious position, it wasn’t always clear who was being focused on/which world they were part of, and I definitely wanted to know more about the world Tom was in while he was travelling.
Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this prior to publication (although I am confused as this is down as published in 2018 so not sure whether it's published or not).

This book sounded SO intriguing!!

But then I realized the author and I must not be on the same level because I immediately had no idea what was going on.

With so many ARC's, so little time. I, unfortunately, had to put this one down and move on.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this early. Your generosity does not go unnoticed.

The synopsis of this book initially grabbed me. A VR game where you actually find yourself immersed in the game? How neat!


Unfortunately, the complete disarray from the first few chapters was too much for me. I had no idea what was going on and I found it very unpleasant to try to read.


Between Tom and Augusta’s chapters, I didn’t really see how they could even intertwine. They didn’t seem to go together at all.

Unfortunately, I had to stop reading after a few chapters. I'm not sure if there was a glitch in the download file or something else. The paragraphs were cut off and switched abruptly between points of view, and I couldn't keep up. Sorry!

So this one wasnt exactly my favorite... it just didnt seem to grab my attention and I struggled to follow along as the setting and timeline and development was just confusing. Not for me I guess but thanks!!

***I received an uncorrected proof of this ebook from netgalley in exchange for an honest review***


<i>Nothing is straightforward. Nothing is as it seems...
As in life, so in dreams.</i>


⭐⭐

Well... this book was a bit of a confusing mess, as was its intent I think? Unfortunately, there were always more questions than answers. The protagonist, like the reader, was new the the Glass Town world but... he didn't ask enough questions. He just kind of went along with all of the chaos and dragged us along for the ride.

This book felt somewhat like a fever dream... some sort of amalgamation of various plot threads going in every direction. Connecting, but also not connecting at all. I was very confused- to the point I needed to jot down little notes to keep track of all of the characters and their motivations... Which, the motivations of almost every single character were very opaque. They wanted power, or freedom?? Money?? I don't really know...

I loved Celia Rees' books when I was younger. They're some of the only middle grade books that stayed on my shelf into adulthood (specifically: Pirates, Witch Child, and Sorceress). I was actually really excited to get approved for this book; but it just didn't do it for me. I almost wonder if I'm a little bit to old to be engaged by the wondrous chaos of the Glass Town world... I could see younger readers loving this.


✝check against final text

A sincere thank you to the publisher, author and Netgalley for providing me with an ebook copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.

This is not my usual genre, I’m more into crime/thriller books and even psychological thrillers too so I am extremely pleased and grateful to them for opening up my mind to something totally different.

If you are looking for a solid thriller with a brilliant main character and a great supporting cast then you should pick this series up and give it a try.


Looking forward to read more of the author's writings.

**Thankyou Netgalley and publisher for providing me a free copy of this book*

This book starts out so confusing. For the first quarter, I had no idea what was happening and it made it difficult to care about the story. As we went along, things became clearer, but it was definitely piece by piece. It's important to read the synopsis and remember that this book is based on Emily Bronte, had I remembered that I might have understood a bit more.

I did like the plot idea of video games evolving past VR and actually letting you live the game. I can easily see developers wanting to go that way if the technology were there and it asks the question, is a virtual reality better than living in the real world? At what point does it cross a line?

The ending lacked some details I would have liked to know and was a bit lackluster after all that Tom went through. I am interested in learning more about Emily Bronte now, so kudos to the author for that!

Thanks to NetGalley for this free book in exchange for an honest review

The Glass Town Wars was a strange book. The premise was interesting, and at first I was intrigued as to how the story would progress, but by the time I was done, I wondered what I had just read. There were plenty of fun moments, but overall I wasn't certain what the story was trying to accomplish, and I never fully bonded with any of the characters or got immersed in their situations. I think perhaps Rees attempted to cram too much in, which left the world building and characterisation a little flimsy. For me this was a 2.5-star read. It had plenty of potential but, for me at least, it didn't quite come together. However, if you are looking for a YA fantasy that offers something completely different and 'out-there', you might want to give it a try.

Celia Rees was one of my favourite authors when I was a teenager. She wrote Witch Child, which it felt like most of the girls in my year group read and loved. I also loved its sequel Sorceress. Then there was Pirates! which I reread repeatedly. Truth or Dare was another book of hers that stuck in my mind. So although it has been about fifteen years since I last read one of her novels, I was actually pretty excited when I saw that she had written a young adult novel based around the Brontë juvenilia. I thought this had the potential to be a really intriguing re-imagining of the Angria and Gondal mythology. What I read though was just ... odd.




The novel opens with Tom in a coma. He's a teenage boy who has had some form of unspecified accident that merits the social media hashtag #heroinacoma. Watching over him is his cheating girlfriend Natalie and his "best friend" (who is the one Natalie is cheating with), Milo. With greater sincere concern, another girl Lucy comes every day to read to him and his nurse Joe is also keeping a close eye. But then Milo sneakily puts something in his eye which is described as like a Babelfish from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and suddenly comatose Tom's dreams switch him to the world of Glass Town.

There are obvious issues with this set up. It's full of clichés. The catalyst for the drama is a vaguely described Babelfish-esque 'thingummy' which never really hangs together. The nurse Joe is a real deus ex machina available to step in and solve everything when the plot gets boxed into a corner. It was such a disappointment compared to the far more richly-realised stories in Rees' other novels. I also never really understood what the 'point' of the story was. It seemed like Tom just had a brief (albeit dramatic) tour of Glass Town and then ... what? He decided he liked the Brontës and had a day out to Haworth? Is that it?

It's such a shame because Rees' descriptions of the Glass Town universe were genuinely interesting. The glass buildings, the political insurrection, the vividly drawn characters - even Charles Wellesley's unsteady worry that they might all be fictional was intriguing. I had a look at some other people's reviews and was interested to note how several of them were rather baffled as they came to it as YA fans rather than Brontëphiles and so could not keep track of what was going on. While my past reading meant I avoided this, I think that some kind of character index or even a map would have made it more accessible for others.

One idea that I found quite thought-provoking was the parallel drawn between the Angria and Gondal stories and modern video gaming. Other than Spyro and The Sims, I am not much of a gamer. However, in the spirit of sharing your partner's interests, I did have a go at Bioshock a few years ago. While I did not really get on with the gameplay (I'm not quick enough on the trigger so I resorted beating the mad surgeon to death with a spanner to get past the first Boss level), I could really see how it was in itself a different form of story-telling. Boy Who Reads Not A Lot loved Bioshock as a teenager and I could understand why. The Brontë siblings used their Angria and Gondal characters as avatars in a very similar way and it was really interesting to see Rees explore that idea further. It's just a shame that this plot strand never really goes anywhere.

Although I did enjoy the section of the book in Glass Town, on the whole it failed to engage me. I found Augusta a rather flat heroine, which was another disappointment because I know Rees is capable of much more impressive female characterisation. I also found the 'romance' between Tom and Augusta ... baffling. Low chemistry doesn't even begin to describe it. Even the glimpses we got of the real Emily felt under-drawn and I felt really sad that we didn't see Gondal as a collaborative enterprise between Emily and Anne. I had expected Glass Town Wars to reflect more directly the battle between the opposing camps of Charlotte and Branwell versus Emily and Anne as each tried to maintain dominance over the narrative. Instead we got this limp internal struggle and it felt utterly lack-lustre. I continue to think highly of Celia Rees as a writer but sadly Glass Town Wars does not put up much of a fight.

I love weird books. Smashing together genres and ideas that literally no other human would ever smash together? Incredible. Amazing. I was in love with the premise of Glass Town Wars because the Bronte sisters and virtual worlds? Absolutely incredible.

And then I read it. Glass Town Wars feels like an idea an author's had in the back of their mind for a decade, morphing and gathering more and more potential plot threads. The problem is, none of those plot threads were cut. I'd try to summarize what I read but I literally cannot because there was just so much going on. Too many perspective characters, plot dumps, and ambiguous conflict left me more confused than any book has in a long time.

This was a fun, interesting and a quick read. It is very beautifully written and the characters and plot are very original. If you are looking for a solid thriller with a brilliant main character and a great supporting cast then you should pick this series up and give it a try.

Glass Town Wars
Understanding this is an advanced copy, I don’t expect everything to be perfect. BUT. There are so many formatting errors that it was a struggle to get past the first few chapters because these issues detracted from the reading experience so much. Every single chapter heading has a formatting error. There are capitalization errors. There are line breaks after only one in a line. It’s annoying. As a reader, I don’t want to work to read your writing. And with these formatting issues, the work really became too much.

And then there’s the story. This reads like stream of consciousness almost. It’s like the author didn’t want to miss anything they’d thought of, so they rushed every word and action possible out, and then never edited it to make sure a reader would understand what’s going on. I do see a plot here, albeit a weak one. And that sucks, because the premise of the book actually sounds interesting, and so much could have been done with it. As it is, I don’t care about the characters because I don’t really know anything about them. There’s no time taken for character building. Ditto for world building. I have no clear basis for when/where this story takes place.

I very rarely don’t finish a book. When I try to, I feel guilty and usually push through. I just can’t with this one. I have no invested interest. Someone with a lot more time than me needs to sit down and go through this book chapter by chapter. An actual beginning needs to be written. And please, fix the formatting issues. Maybe if major edits were done, I’d give this another shot, because the idea is really good. The execution just falls unbelievably short here.

This book truly was not meant for me, not because the genre is not my cup of tea, but mainly because I cannot say I know what I just read; apart from the mediocre writing style and world-building, the plot that was all over the place, I could not connect with any of the characters; they were two-dimensional, never felt real and had no motivations other than to get out of a bad situation.

Glass Town Wars is a mind-blowing and thrilling read that fans of Ready Player One and Mary Hoffman's Stravganza series will love.

It's an original and gripping tale that will leave you on the edge of your seat.

I was approved to review this book on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. After examining the publisher’s profile and finding no indication of their preferred timescale, I am publishing this review now. It will be cross-posted on my book blog "Bookmarked" ( https://angiesbookmarks.wordpress.com/2020/04/26/glass-town-wars-arc-review ), Goodreads and NetGalley.

I was confused by the fact that I was approved to review an advance copy on NetGalley. The book is slated to come out in September 2020, but after a quick google search, it seems it has already been published in paperback and hardback. Is this an advance copy or something else?

Regardless, I would like to preamble this review by saying that I physically could not bring myself to finish this book and had to leave it at around the 40% mark. I rarely do not finish a book, no matter how bad it is, but Glass Town Wars was genuinely impossible to read. This review will cover what I have read of the book and explain as precisely as I can why I found it so hard to enjoy. Albeit a long review, I hope the comments below will be helpful.

WHAT I LIKED

Glass Town Wars follows Tom, a child in a coma who is given the opportunity to enter the world of a videogame. There he meets Augusta, a warrior determined to assert her agency over her life and fight for her freedom. Their paths intertwine and as they help each other, they fall in love. However, the more Tom becomes invested in the videogame world, the more he draws away from his family, his friends, and his reality.

The concept sounded amazing and fresh. It made me think of the movie Avatar (the protagonist becomes more and more dependent on his surrogate body when his human body has suffered partial paralysis and forces him in a wheelchair, and in this way romances his otherworldly love interest), within a Ready Player One framework and the melancholy of Bridge to Terabithia.

I can appreciate the way in which "real-life" Tom was conjured. Despite the problems I outlined below, I did find his frustration at his condition realistic. I could feel his powerlessness. Being able to sense the other characters only via sound, smell and occasionally touch added a veil of fear which I believe would have enriched his character if built upon more.

When I was accepted to review this book, I was incredibly excited. I was looking forward to themes of family love and friendship, fantasy and reality, to an engaging bildungsroman that would see Tom (and Augusta) mature. All of this in a YA format seemed like the perfect recipe for a new bestseller. Alas, none of my expectations were met.

WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE

If this really were a game, it would be a very glitchy one.

The first chapters (1-5) are confusing, disjointed and frustrating to read, and effectively encapsulate most of the book’s problems going forward. To avoid spoilers, I have tried to limit my discussion to the first five chapters, as the following chapters present the same issues. I have identified them as follows:

Plot
There is no clear sense of storyline or plot or stakes. I am suddenly being introduced to a large number of characters – often without context – but relationships among them and to the plot are not clarified. There isn’t a clear antagonist that spurs the characters into action. What do they want? What is stopping them? How? How do they overcome it?

Writing and Pace
The writing is disjointed, fragmented and bland. I often struggled to follow the narrative progression within the same paragraph, and none of the descriptions had anything particular or unique about them. There is a recurrent and often incorrect use of semicolons which exacerbates the already long and winding descriptions.

Throughout, the action keeps switching scenes without any apparent logical progression or build-up (e.g. in Chapter 8 Augusta was talking to a messenger and suddenly they are being attacked by something undefined as the messenger is reporting on it).

Pace and plot are swamped in exposition, resulting in a slow and uneventful read. Diction is at times too colloquial for prose and would be more appropriate if limited to speech (e.g. “he kind of bonded with them”).

World-building
Consequently, the world-building falls flat. Many things and sights are mentioned, but not built upon. While certain descriptions go on for several sentences, there is a very vague and nebulous sense of place. I have no idea where the game/book is set, if it’s similar to our world or not, what kind of history it has, who are its people and what kind of strife is tearing them apart.

Missing Context
Many things are mentioned but never contextualised. For instance, in Chapter 2 we see Tom in a coma and Milo mentions “hashtag heroinacoma.” While I appreciate the difficulties a boy in a coma may have concentrating, as a reader I would have liked a bit more context around his situation: why is this hashtag important? How did he end up there? What even is Milo’s relationship to Tom? I mildly understood that they used to be friends but Milo presents itself more as antagonistic than amicable.

I think more context could have been given easily, since Tom has the presence of mind to hear Milo’s arrival from a mile away by the sound of his shoes, as well as reminisce about when Milo passed his A levels and his wealth. There is a little bit more about Tom in Chapter 6 or 7, but still nothing that would give me any relevant context or make me care.

The introduction to the VR project is rushed and feels incredibly improvised, almost like an afterthought. Being named after a mythological fish did not make it more intriguing, just somewhat weirder. There is apparently no rhyme or reason to this project other than “it seems cool.” It becomes secondary during the story while I believe it should have continued to play a central role.

In Chapter 3, the “Twelve” and the “Genii” are mentioned without a clear explanation of what they are, who they are, and how they are relevant. In Chapter 4, there is a mention of the “Glass Town Faction” even before we know what Glass Town is and that there is a war going on.

Character Development and Reader's Investment
There is little insight into the main characters, let alone the others. There is little to no sense of voice or point of view, of motivation and emotion. They feel two-dimensional. They’re built out of exposition, not action (telling instead of showing). As a reader, this completely shuts me out from the narrative.

I am not invested in their stories, and thus I am not brought to care. They just exist, and I find no motivation to keep reading about them. Readers need to care in order to keep reading, readers must be invested in the protagonist’s future, and the writing does not achieve this.

Audience
I believe the audience of this book should be redefined. On NetGalley, this is identified as "Teen&YA." Considering other examples of famous YA literature in circulation, this one (as it is) cannot compete fairly. I don't think it would appeal to a sixteen-year-old reader or older; an age range of about 10-12 years old feels more appropriate to me.

Point of View
Sudden and unannounced shifts in point of view are extremely disorienting. Chapter 4 starts with an unnamed “She” and then switches to an unnamed “He.” I am incredibly confused by this change. The point of view then switches again at the end of the chapter. Multiply this for each chapter. Confusion abounds.

This spasmodic and fragmented kind of narrative will hardly appeal to younger readers, to whom this book is marketed. It makes the book hard to read and follow (even for an adult!), and thus will unlikely be to their taste.

Inconsistencies
There are several inconsistencies, some of which I have reported below:
• If Roberts, Webster and Tom are on a secret mission to raid the camp of its flags, why are they killing men needlessly?
• Why are they collapsing a tent without killing those inside? This is not being stealthy.
• Why are two soldiers sent to watch Tom (a potential enemy) follow his orders and agree to split up?
• Tom seems to very quickly decide Augusta needs him and get a sense of purpose out of a grand total of five minutes they have seen and spoken to each other.
• Tom is simultaneously aware and unaware of being in a game, which made his questions (e.g. “how do I know what this is?”) superfluous and annoying.
• I would argue the military strategy behind sending a possible enemy back to his potential home camp, thus giving him the opportunity to raise the alarm and get Augusta’s men killed.

Spelling Mistakes
There were several spelling mistakes, suggesting the book still needs to go through the proofreading stage.

Chapter 3
I would like to mention Chapter 3 separately, as it was unfortunately, in my humble opinion, a complete failure. Hardly anything makes narrative sense and it left me disoriented about plot, characters, point of view, lore, place and time.

 

Overall, as the book stands now, it gave me the impression that this is more of a draft than a finished novel. It feels unpolished, incomplete. Unfortunately this book really wasn’t for me, despite the amazing premise that drew me in. I hope other readers will find something they enjoy in it!