The magic protecting Tilja’s little valley is dying. Can she, Tahl, and their grandparents save it from the greedy empire? Only one man can help them. And that man controls the very fabric of time.

Time is a great rope.”

Well I’m at the end of mine.

I just finished The Ropemaker by Peter Dickinson. It was recommended to me by one of my friends on LRRH.

Why am I at the end of my rope? Because this book was a mess. There’s a program on my computer that only allows me to get on for an hour a day. I thought that this would be ok because I have a lot of recommended books to read. A word of advice. If you have a lot of time to read a book. Don’t read this one.

I’m not saying that the story wasn’t good. It was. But the first 150 pages or so were confusing, frustrating, haphazard and occasionally boring. I found myself trudging through them with a kind of duty. I very rarely start a book and then not finish. It took me almost a week to read the first 150 pages. I read the last 250 today.

The story did pick up, but it didn’t get any less frustrating. I got confused easily as the author jumped from thing to thing. I couldn’t follow the dialogue and had to read large parts of it again and again. I was able to read the last 100 pages with more ease. Only having to repeat segments occasionally. But the ending was dissatisfying.

I suppose I had to have one negative blog entry. Well I guess this is it.

The epilogue was just like the beginning. I could hardly understand anything. Most of the holes in the story I had to fill with guess work, and that left me unhappy. Imagination is one thing, guess work is another.

So while the story was very interesting, the writing was not very good. Who knows? Maybe one of you will read it and absolutely love it. It’s just not my kind of book I guess. I don’t regret reading it though. Well, hopefully my next one will be a little faster paced.

~Enna Isilee