Jane, Unlimited

I picked it up because I absolutely loved her Graceling-books. However, I was slightly disappointed by this one. I just couldn't really connect to the story or some of the characters. There are some interesting aspects to the worlds she tried to create, but overall not a book I would recommend or reread (which I have done with the Graceling-series).

Apparently, this book started out as a choose-your-own-adventure and it grieves me that it didn't stay that way, because that could have been awesomely revolutionary. Instead we get something that is neither fish nor fowl, a book that keeps changing its mind about what it wants to be, a kludge-like story full of disparate pieces that never fit together. In short its a clunky, inelegant, headache-inducing experiment that's trying so damned hard to cram everything in, its annoying. I think the mantra, “Less is More” would have served this tale very, very well.

I won this advance reading copy through Goodreads so thank you to the publisher and I'm sorry I didn't like it more.

In the author's note at the end, Cashore mentions that this was originally conceived and written as a Choose Your Own Adventure book. It probably should have stayed that way. This format did not work for me at all. There are a lot of positive qualities in the story and the writing, but for the last 2/3 of the book, I was too bored and annoyed to appreciate them. Hence why it took me 3 months to slog through all 440 pages.

I will certainly pick up Cashore's future projects, but this one was, quite simply, a mess.

I loved this book a lot, i loved how the stories went so many ways but through all of it, it interconnected everything and the stories went really well together. The only reason i'm not giving it a full 5 stars is because of the horror chapter. i won't spoil any of it, i'll just say that i feel like it was waaayyy too dark and awful to belong in that book. On it's own it would be ok, but it kind of cast a dark shadow over the rest of the book for me, because i couldn't stop thinking about how the story could've ended.

This was the most different type of writing I've experienced in a long time. I can't even compare it to something else other than the mixture of genres that this book encompasses. It's a little confusing in the beginning but by the second part a light goes off and suddenly you're slightly in awe of the complexity of writing. This is nothing at all, even close to Kristin Cashore's other series. So if you start reading expecting ‘Graceling' inspired content, you won't find it. This again was so different from anything I've ever read.